Rizzo’s Fire (3 page)

“Two years I smelled that,” she said. “Gave me a goddamned headache.”

“Well, you put up with shit for a good partner. Working with him was one of the best years I had on the job. Mike’s a good guy.”

“The best,” Priscilla replied with a nod. “And we should get along okay, having Mike in common and all.”

Rizzo shrugged and drank coffee. “Let’s hope,” he said. “He’s a good-looking son of a bitch, too, so at least you still got that. With me, I mean.”

“Not quite, Joe, not exactly,” she said.

Rizzo feigned shock. “What?” he said. “My wife says I’m fuckin’ gorgeous.”

Priscilla turned back to her paperwork. “Yeah, well, straight women are like that. They’ve got to be a little delusional. Keeps ’em sane.”

Rizzo stood. “Don’t feel you gotta hold back . . . you just speak freely, you hear?”

“No problem, Partner. That’s my style.”

He turned to move away. “Give me a holler when you’re ready. I’d like to get out on the street. We need to get to work on our cases. Especially that asshole over near New Utrecht High who’s been wavin’ his dick at schoolgirls down by the train entrance. I got a lead on ’im and we need to talk to some of the victims. I’ll be at my desk.”

“Okay, I only need a few minutes more.”

“Take your time,” he said, crossing the cramped squad room to his own cluttered desk near the window.

THREE MEN
sat in a rear booth of Vinny’s, a small corner pizzeria in Bensonhurst. All in their mid-twenties, they had spent the last few hours of Columbus Day drinking beer and shooting pool at the Park Ridge Bar and Grill, three blocks south of the pizzeria. Now, slightly intoxicated and hungry, they talked and laughed loudly as they devoured a thick-crusted Sicilian pie.

The street beyond the plate-glass window in front was dark. A cold October wind was blowing, the streets of the working-class neighborhood dark and deserted.

At ten minutes to nine, one of the group, Gary Tucci, slid out from the booth and rose to his feet.

“I gotta get going,” he said. “I got to be in at six tomorrow. Take it easy, guys, I’ll see you.”

Tucci’s two companions waved him good night, and he turned to leave. Walking along the narrow pathway between the ser vice counter and a row of booths to his right, Tucci stumbled. Looking down, he realized he had tripped over the extended right leg of the pizzeria’s only other patron, a brooding, dark-haired man of about forty.

“Sorry, guy,” Tucci said. “Didn’t see your foot.”

The man’s face darkened. “Maybe you oughta watch where the fuck you’re walkin’, asshole,” he said.

Tucci paused and turned slightly toward the man. “Yeah?” he said. “And maybe
you
should keep your big feet outta the aisle.”

The man glanced to the rear of the pizzeria, noting Tucci’s companions, now turning in their booth toward the sound of voices.

“You a tough guy, with your two friends backin’ you?” the man said, shifting in his seat, beginning to stand.

“Hey, fellas,” the owner said from behind the counter. “Take it easy, it was just a little accident.”

“Bullshit,” the man in the booth said. “This prick kicked me. He saw my foot there, I don’t see no Seein’ Eye dog leadin’ him outta here. He fuckin’ kicked me.”

Now, with considerable speed, the man cleared the booth and stood up, shoving Tucci hard, forcing him onto the countertop. Tucci, despite his own drinking, caught the odor of alcohol coming from the man. He also saw the blind rage burning in his eyes.

“Yo, chill out, guy,” one of Tucci’s companions said, standing as he spoke.

“Sit down, Coke,” Tucci said. “I can handle this.” He then turned his gaze to the man. “You got a problem here, buddy, come outside and let’s do it,” he said, his voice low and tight.

The man’s face contorted with even greater rage. “Fuckin’ punk,” he said, throwing a looping right round house at Tucci’s head.

Leaning backward, Tucci raised a stiff left forearm to intercept the blow. Then, crouching slightly, he thrust forward, pumping a short, fast right uppercut. His balled fist caught the man squarely on the jaw, driving it upward, teeth smashing together and shattering with the impact. Pinkish, blood-tinged saliva sprayed about his upper lip and right cheek, and his legs buckled. Tucci bulled forward, shouldering the man backward, sprawling him into the bench seat of the booth.

“Stay down, asshole,” Tucci hissed, “or I’ll send you to the fuckin’ hospital.”

Andy Hermann, the second of Tucci’s companions, approached, a broad smile on his face.

“Don’t start shit with a Golden Glover, Jack,” he said to the dazed, bloodied man, using his best Frank Sinatra inflection. Then he turned to Tucci. “C’mon, let’s get out of here. Let’s pick up the paper and go home.”

Tucci, adrenaline pumping, considered it. Then the third young man, nicknamed Coke, grabbed him, pushing him toward the door. “C’mon, Gary,” Coke said. “Walk.”

Reluctantly, Tucci allowed himself to be shoved along. As the three reached the exit, the man in the booth pulled himself upright in his seat, his legs still too shaky to risk standing.

“I’m gonna kill you, motherfucker,” he called. “Kill you!”

Tucci’s face flushed with renewed anger. “Yeah? Well, when you decide to do it, you can find me at Ben’s candy store, over near Seventy-first Street. That’s where I hang out. Come kill me over there. I’ll be waitin’ for you.”

With that, they left. After a moment, the man stood, his face red, blood trickling from his mouth.

Nunzio, the owner of the pizzeria, shrugged from behind the counter. “I tried to warn you, buddy. Nobody fucks with that kid. Nobody.”

The man glared at Nunzio, then turned and reeled out the door, turning right and stumbling around the corner and down Seventieth Street.

The huge, white-faced clock on the pizzeria wall read eight fifty-six.

Ben’s candy store, one block south of Vinny’s, was an illuminated oasis on an otherwise darkened stretch of Thirteenth Avenue. The other stores, depending on their specialties, had either closed early for the traditional Italian-American Columbus Day observance or had been closed the entire day. The streets were empty, with only the occasional passing of a vehicle or a rumbling city bus. Periodically, a car would veer into the bus stop in front of Ben’s and someone would jump out and run in for the late edition of the
Daily News
, a
Daily Racing Form,
cigarettes, or a container of milk.

Gary Tucci, Jimmy “Coke” Cocca, and Andy Hermann made their way along the darkened avenue. As they had done since childhood, Coke and Andy shared by association in Tucci’s short, sweet, and devastating victory in a fight he had neither sought nor encouraged. Their youthful invincibility made them oblivious to the chilling wind, their laughter echoing through the concrete and glass, steel and asphalt canyon they knew so well.

It was easy enough, then, for the brooding man to surprise them, when, some brief moments later, they emerged from Ben’s, newspapers in hand, still high on the night’s adventure.

The man leapt from the shadows of the Majestic Gift and Lamp Shop, the storefront to the right of Ben’s, a rifle grasped tightly in his hands.

It was Coke who reacted first. The sight of the angry man sent Coke back in time, back to the darkened, narrow streets of the slums of Baghdad, and back further still to his training days at the Marine base on Parris Island.

Coke sprang forward, grabbing the rifle barrel, twisting it violently downward and to his left.

“Gun!” he shouted, then again, “Gun!”

But it wasn’t a trained, armed, and deadly Marine comrade who responded to his call, it was Gary Tucci, now frightened and confused, and driven not by training and experience but by instinct, terror, and an innate courage. Tucci stepped forward, also to Coke’s left, and reached out for the man.

They were all stunned by the flash. It appeared to come out of nowhere, illuminating the darkened street and turning the scene into a surreal, sharply shadowed false daylight. Then came the sound. A deafening, ear-ringing release of energy and black powder exploding. Then, almost simultaneously, a lesser bang sounded from across the broad avenue as the darkened fluorescent bakery sign shattered under the ricocheting bullet.

The scene froze for an instant before Tucci collapsed, falling to the pavement like a puppet with severed strings. Then, like a resumed video recording, the scene began to play itself out once again.

Startled by the shot, Coke had let his hold on the weapon’s barrel weaken, and the shooter pulled it from his grasp. All three men looked downward to the fallen Tucci. He looked up at them, one to the other, a calm, detached look on his face. Then they followed his dropping gaze.

Tucci’s right foot lay shoeless, his black Nike having been blown from it, landing in the gutter twenty feet away. The dark gray athletic sock he wore was pushed inward into a gaping, black hole rimmed with white froth, where his instep had once been. As they watched, the hole suddenly welled with thick, rich-looking blood. It was the color of dark burgundy wine and pulsated in rhythm with his increasing heartbeat. Then came Tucci’s scream, the gut-wrenching, ear-shattering howl of unbearable agony.

The sound shattered the brief stillness of the scene, once again seemingly freed from its eerie pause mode. The shooter, now trembling and panic-stricken, backed away. Andy Hermann dropped to his knees, reaching out to Tucci, watching the blood overflow and bubble out onto the dirty sidewalk. Jimmy Coke, rage now roaring in his brain, turned to the shooter.

The man backed farther away, his eyes wild, his finger jerking on the trigger of the rifle pointed at Coke’s chest. The weapon, a bolt action Winchester .30– 06, did not fire; the bolt had not been recharged.

The man then turned and ran diagonally across the avenue to the far sidewalk and back toward Seventieth Street. A moment later, a reanimated Coke took off after him, his mind whirling, his fingers twitching, searching for the reassuring feel of his Marine Corps M-16 1A automatic weapon.

Reaching the halfway point to Seventieth Street, the man, still running, pulled furiously on the bolt of the weapon, chambering a second round. He then spun to face his pursuer, raising the weapon.

Coke, now crashing back to the reality of the situation, suddenly confronted his danger. He threw himself to the left, behind a black Buick parked at the curb, waiting for the shot to sound.

But the shot never came. When, after a moment, he peered around the right quarter-panel of the Buick, he saw the man turning the corner of Seventieth Street, heading east toward Fourteenth Avenue. After another few seconds, a dark pickup truck roared out from Seventieth Street, turning right onto Thirteenth Avenue and disappearing into the night, its engine straining under full throttle.

Coke twisted around, pressing his back into the reassuring bulk of the Buick. Listening to his heart pound, his head fell forward, dangling on suddenly weakened neck muscles. As his body undertook the familiar, quaking reaction to the subsiding adrenaline rush, his eyes welled.

He sat there for a time, making no effort to stop the tears.

AT NINE-TWENTY
p.m., Rizzo sat behind the wheel of the Impala jotting notes into his pad, Priscilla sitting beside him, the car parked before a large apartment house on Sixteenth Avenue. They had just come from the small apartment of one Bruce Jacoby. Rizzo had been developing Jacoby as the prime suspect in a series of indecent exposure incidents that took place near the local high school.

“So,” Priscilla said. “You figure this guy for the perp?”

Rizzo responded without looking up. “Yeah. No doubt. That’s why he lawyered up so fast.” He finished his notes, then reached to start the engine. “When his lawyer comes into the squad room tomorrow, we’ll settle this. Guy’s guilty as sin.”

At that moment, the Motorola beside Priscilla squawked to life.

“Dispatch, six-two one seven, copy?” a female voice sounded in singsong cadence.

“That’s us,” Rizzo said.

Priscilla raised the radio to her mouth. “Six-two one seven dispatch, copy, go.”

“Six-two one seven, see the detective eye-eff-oh seven-one oh-six, say again, seven-one oh-six one-three avenue, copy?”

Priscilla reached across the seat and took Rizzo’s note pad, bracing it against her leg and slipping a Bic from her pocket.

“Dispatch, one-seven to seven-one-oh-six, one-three avenue,” she replied, jotting the address. “What’s the job, copy?”

“One-seven, male white shot, nonfatal. See the detective, k?”

“Ten-four dispatch, one-seven out, k?”

“Ten-four.”

Rizzo pulled the car away from the curb and headed for Thirteenth Avenue. “What was that location?” he asked.

“In front of Seventy-one-oh-six Thirteenth,” Priscilla said. “See the detective.”

“That’s interesting,” he said. “Why see the detective? Why not see the uniform or the citizen or whoever? If there’s a bull there already, whadda they need with us? The call wasn’t to aid investigation, it was a response to incident.”

Priscilla shrugged. “Don’t know, Partner, I’m new at this, remember?”

Approaching Seventy-first Street, Rizzo slowed the car and carefully negotiated the thin crowd of onlookers, police cars, and uniformed officers milling in and around the expanse of Thirteenth Avenue. Nearing the sidewalk area cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape, he double parked the Chevy and shut it down.

Rizzo and Jackson approached a short, squat man wearing a weathered overcoat, a blue and gold detective badge dangling upside down from the lapel.

“Hello, Anthony,” Rizzo said to the man. “How you doing tonight?”

Detective Anthony Sastone smiled. “Fine, Joe. How about you?”

“Good. This here is my new partner, Priscilla Jackson. Cil, Anthony Sastone, Six-Eight squad. Our neighbor.”

They shook, then Rizzo turned to the business at hand.

“Tell me,” he said to Sastone.

“Male white, twenty-four, gets into a fight with the perp over at Vinny’s on Seventieth Street. The vic wins. Perp says, ‘I’m gonna kill you.’ Our hero says, ‘Well, I’ll be on the corner, hanging out by the candy store. Come and kill me there.’ Two minutes later, the perp shows up with a rifle. There’s a struggle, gun goes off, blows half the guy’s foot off. Look here, see? Round went right through his foot and into the sidewalk, ricochetin’ across the street and blowing out the storefront fluorescent on the bakery. I took a look. Bullet may be lodged in the mortar between the bricks. Probably beat to hell, though. No ballistic value, other than maybe caliber.”