Rizzo’s Fire (11 page)

He sighed. “To cover up the bodies,” he said softly, nodding. “To cover up the fuckin’ bodies.”

LATER THAT
morning, Rizzo sat sipping coffee and looking into the bright, animated eyes of his youngest daughter, Carol.

“Nice place,” he said, eyeing their surroundings. “I always liked it here.”

“Yes,” Carol answered, reaching for her own container of coffee. “It is pretty cool.”

The Student Activities Center sat squarely in the middle of the Academic Mall on the sprawling Long Island campus of Stony Brook State University.

Now Carol smiled across the small round table at her father, her light brown eyes twinkling under the fluorescent lighting.

“So,” she said casually. “To what do I owe the honor of this unexpected visit from my father.”

Rizzo nodded slightly. “Fair question, I guess,” he said.

She put her coffee down and twisted her lips as she spoke. “Bet I can guess,” she said.

Rizzo laughed. “Yeah, I bet you can.” Then, after a small pause, his face grew somber. Leaning inward on the table, he interlocked his fingers, laying his hands atop the table’s cool surface.

“The test,” he said. “Next week.”

Carol sighed. “What about it, Daddy?” she asked, her voice firm.

“Would you have been right?” he asked. “If you had guessed, I mean?”

Carol, without amusement, nodded. She waited for him to continue.

After another pause, he did. “There’s no reason for you to take it, hon,” he said. “Why sit through a couple a hours of a police entrance exam for a job you’re not gonna take anyway?”

Carol shook her short brown hair. “Except I am going to take it,” she answered, her tone clipped. “As soon as I clear the medical and physical and psychological.” She paused, holding her father’s cool gaze. “I am going to take it,” she repeated. “It’s what I want.”

Rizzo shook his head, the carefully rehearsed and chosen words of his argument fading to a slight, panicky anger.

“It’s a bad idea,” he said.

“Is it?” Carol said, more forcefully than she had intended. “For who? Me . . . or you?”

Rizzo’s anger rose. “For you,” he said, his voice cold.

Carol shook her head sadly. “Really? Are all cops bad liars, Dad, or just you?”

Rizzo grunted with bitterness. “The best liars in the world are cops, Carol,” he said. “That’s one of the first things you learn when you go on this job. How to lie.” He shrugged. “If I had a dollar for every time I testified without perjurin’ myself, I couldn’t pay for these two coffees.”

She gave a humorless laugh. “Okay, Dad, exaggerate. Anything to help you make your point.”

He shook his head. “I don’t have to exaggerate to make my point. The truth is more than good enough. All I’m saying is being a cop isn’t a good career for a young girl, a young person. It’s not the kinda life you want to lead, Carol, it’s—”

His daughter cut him off, her own anger now tugging at her facial muscles. “Just what makes you think you know what kind of a life I want to lead?” she said. “Wasn’t it you, you and Mom, who lectured us every damn day about how we could be this, we could be that, anything a boy could do, we could do? Wasn’t that you? Now, all of a sudden—”

Rizzo interrupted. “This has nothin’ to do with that,” he said, more harshly than he had intended. “Yeah, you could be a cop, just as good a cop as any son of mine coulda been. But you know what? If you were my son, I’d be tellin’ you the same thing. Yeah, you can be a good cop, you can be a good ax murderer, too. But that don’t mean you should be one, just ’cause you can be.”

“But Daddy . . .”

Rizzo shook his head so sharply, the movement transferred to the tiny table, shaking their coffee containers. “The job isn’t what you think it is,” he said. “Maybe it never was, but it sure as hell isn’t these days. You wanna be some kinda hero, you wanna change the world, saves lives? Become a schoolteacher, like your mother. You think I ever prevented a crime? You think I ever made a friggin’ difference? Maybe once, twice in twenty-seven years. The resta the time, I was too late—the woman was already raped, the baby already thrown out the window, the pizza delivery guy already shot to death for the twenty bucks he was carryin’. It’s always already done, Carol, you don’t stop it from happening.”

Now it was Carol who shook her head sharply. “That’s total B.S., and you know it. You’re only saying that to make a point. All those arrests you made over the years, hundreds, maybe a thousand. You have no way of knowing how many crimes, how much grief and suffering you prevented, how many lives you saved by putting all those criminals behind bars. You know it’s true, Daddy, you know—”

“It sucks the life outta you,” he said, his anger now clashing with a sudden onset of depression welling in his chest. “It eats at you, a little bit at a time, till one day you wake up and you ain’t there anymore. Somebody else is. Somebody you partnered with years ago, when you were a rookie, some old cop long retired, or dead. And now he’s back, wearin’ your clothes, livin’ your life.” Rizzo’s eyes implored her. “Believe me, honey. It sucks the life outta you. It puts out your fire. Like a slow, constant trickle of water, drop by drop, bit by bit, till the fire is all gone.”

Carol, so self-assured just moments before, now sat studying her father’s face, her resolve wavering with the sight of him so upset.

“All right, Daddy,” she said, her tone now soft. “I realize it can be a difficult life. But anything worthwhile is difficult.” She smiled. “Another one of the things you taught me.”

“Don’t make me fight my own words, Carol,” he said. “Please.”

“You’re not,” she said, leaning closer to him, laying a hand on his arm. “You’re fighting the truth. Those words you spoke years ago. That’s what they were, the truth.”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, digging spurs of determination into his consciousness even as he frantically fought to recall the words of his mea sured, rehearsed argument.

“Do you want your fire extinguished?” he asked helplessly. “Do you think lockin’ up a few skells will make it all worthwhile?”

Carol’s smile faded, her own determination taking hold again.

“Dad,” she said. “You’re just not being honest with yourself. Don’t forget I grew up watching you. I saw, I heard. I remember when you’d be working a case, dozens of times, important, meaningful cases. I remember seeing you all psyched up and full of energy, tearing into your work. That seemed like fire to me. Real fire.”

Rizzo looked into her eyes and saw the inevitability of her determination. Even as a strange, almost disjointed pride welled within him, his anger, more insistent, more pugnacious, rushed back into his head. He stood suddenly, pulling his arm out from under her still present hand. He looked down at his daughter as visions of childhood transgressions, less than perfect report cards, and sibling squabbles flashed before his eyes, all of them dwarfed and dropped on the trash heap of insignificance by this sudden adult situation.

“Forget the goddamned cops, Carol,” he said harshly. “You’re not takin’ that test and you’re not taking the job. End of story.”

She shook her head. “I refuse to discuss this anymore,” she said with near equal toughness. “How dare you issue fiats! If we’re going to continue to argue about this, I’ll just not come home. I’ll stay at the dorm through the holidays.”

Rizzo nodded, turning to move away. “Yeah,” he said. “You do that. Sleep in an empty dorm room for the holidays. It’ll be good practice for you—for sleeping in a radio car at three a.m. on Christmas morning, next to some fat, smelly old cop, or sleeping on the floor of central booking waitin’ for some idiot A.D.A. to show up and process your complaint. Sleepin’ in some stinkin’, piss-stained precinct holding cell ’cause of some round-the-clock emergency, or outside some shit hole tenement where somebody just found a dead junkie after two months. Sleeping with cigarette filters stuck up your nose to dull the stench, markin’ the hours till some third-world medical examiner shows up and announces, yeah, the guy is officially dead.” Rizzo nodded. “Yeah, Carol, I did every one of those things, more times than I can remember.”

He dug his car keys from his pants pocket, his face flushed. “Then I’d come home and tell you and your sisters a ‘Ben the Bear’ story. Some of the guys just went to the precinct bar, got drunk, and wound up screwing some bimbo who was out trollin’ for cops.”

He turned and began to walk away, his eyes searching for the exit.

“We’ll see what works for you,” he said over his shoulder, picking up his pace and leaving her sitting there alone.

CHAPTER SIX

November

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, DAWNED
cold and dreary, a misty rain moving through Brooklyn on a light westerly wind. The front pages of the tabloids screamed bold, black headlines. The
New York Times,
normally crime free on page one, featured the story prominently.

Avery Mallard, native New Yorker and Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright, had been found murdered in his Manhattan home, his body sprawled before a showcase filled with Tony awards, New York Drama Critics Circle awards, two Emmys, the Pulitzer itself, and more than a dozen lesser prizes.

Joe Rizzo sat in the front passenger seat of the Impala reading the
Daily News
’s version of the murder. Priscilla Jackson wove the car through the now familiar streets of the Sixty-second Precinct, her right hand lightly on the wheel, her left resting on her thigh.

“Shame about this guy,” Rizzo said, closing the paper and tossing it carefully onto the backseat. “He was only sixty-one. Paper says his best years were behind him, though.”

Priscilla shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. But his new play,
An Atlanta Landscape,
they say it’s a shoo-in for the big awards.”

“Yeah, I read about that,” Rizzo said. “Bunch of bleedin’ heart bullshit. For sure it’ll get all the attention.”

“Yeah, well, not everything can be
‘Animal House
Meets
The Odd Couple,’
Joe,” Priscilla said. “Some works actually got somethin’ to say, Partner. Matter of fact, Karen and I saw that play about a month ago. It was terrific.”

Rizzo arched his brow. “Well, ain’t you the literary one. All those misspent years workin’ Manhattan got your head turned around.”

Priscilla shrugged. “No, not really. Actually,” she said in a neutral tones, “I do a little writing myself.”

Rizzo turned to her. “No kiddin’? Like what? Plays like this guy Mallard?”

“No, not exactly,” she said. “And for your info,
nobody
writes plays like this dude. He was the master, had a lifetime run of great works including this new one. No, me, I just write some short stories. And I’ve been foolin’ with a novel. Karen even talked me into taking a class at the Ninety-second Street Y. I go on Tuesday nights when we’re not working.”

Rizzo nodded. “Well, imagine that: a regular Josephine Wambaugh I’m workin’ with.”

“Not quite, brother, not quite,” she said, “but I’m tryin’.”

“Good for you, Cil. I wish you luck with it.”

She frowned, turning her attention fully back to driving.

“Between me and you,” she said, “this is some very private shit. I only told Mike about it a week ago. With you and Karen, that’s just three people who know. I wouldn’t want it getting around the precinct.”

“I’ll bet,” Rizzo said with a laugh. “Don’t worry. Far as I’m concerned, you can barely read, let alone write. Just like the rest of us dumb-ass cops. My lips are sealed.”

She nodded. “Good. I just told you in case it ever comes up. With Mike, maybe, or if you ever meet Karen. Wouldn’t want any awk-ward moments.”

“No, Cil. We wouldn’t want any awkward moments while I’m sippin’ sherry with you and your girlfriend. Heaven forbid.”

“Good,” Priscilla said. “Now, what was that address? This is Sixty-seventh Street.”

Rizzo glanced at his note pad. “Fourteen-forty.”

They scanned the addresses of the neat, attached row houses that lined the street, then Priscilla swung the Chevy to the curb and parked.

As they undid their shoulder harnesses, Rizzo glanced around.

“I knew this block sounded familiar,” he said. “My daughter Carol had a friend from Catholic school lived here somewhere. Years ago when she was in grammar school.”

Priscilla reached across to the glove compartment and removed her note pad. Then, sitting upright, she used the rearview mirror to smooth her hair.

“Yeah?” she said. Then, with a slight glance to Rizzo, she asked, “How’s that goin’, by the way? That situation with Carol and the cops? You talk to her yet?”

Rizzo nodded grimly. “Oh, I spoke to her, all right.”

Priscilla saw the tense creases at his eye.

“And?” she asked again, swinging her eyes away from him. “How’d it go?”

He told her of his Stony Brook meeting with his daughter. When he had finished, Priscilla shook her head, her lips twisted.

“Jesus, Joe,” she said. “You couldn’t have fucked that up any more if you were tryin’.” She shook her head once more.

Rizzo glanced over from the Impala’s passenger seat, his jaw working a piece of Nicorette. “You sound like my goddamned wife. I can use a little support here, for Christ sake.”

“Yeah, well, what you call support, I call a hand job,” Priscilla replied. “I’m telling you, you gotta fix this. And fix it fast.”

Rizzo shook his head. “Bullshit,” he said.

Priscilla answered with a snort. “No, Joe,” she said. “No bullshit.”

“You know what she told me once?” Rizzo began. “One of her criminology professors—can you imagine what this asshole is like?—tells the class that all across America, at different times over the years, cities started to get tired of their own existence. The buildings got grimy, the trains and buses started wearin’ out, the roads and bridges got beat up and were falling apart. And, of course, the crime got worse and worse. He told them how it happened in New York years ago, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia. And you know what he tells them saved those cities?”

“I got a feelin’ I can guess, Partner,” said Priscilla. “But go ahead, knock yourself out, tell me.”