Tower: A Novel (10 page)

“Pretty cryptic for a cop, cuz.”

“Then let me explain it to you. You’re one of us or one of them. It’s up or down with no change of direction.”

“What if I choose them?”

“It’s your prerogative, I suppose,” O’Connor admitted. “But then you’d be the second person in your family to commit suicide.”

“Suicide?”

“Exactly so,” O’Connor said. “Cause even if you don’t take the offer, we’ll let it leak that you’re working for us and you’ll be dead.”

“That’s murder, not suicide.”

“You’re splitting hairs, lad. Either way, you’ll be dead.”

“Nice operation you guys are running,” I sneered.

“You think that stone cold Griffin would give you an option? Come on, lad, use that—what’s that expression, Ira—your
Yiddisher
…”

“Yiddisher kupf,”
Ira said. “Jewish head.”

“Yes, your Jewish smarts,” O’Connor translated.

Wasn’t being left with much of a choice. Nicky would’ve told them both to go fuck themselves and taken a swing at O’Connor. I wasn’t Nicky.

“I’ll do it.”

“Decisive, I like that,” O’Connor said, beaming like a new father. “Done at the speed of light. Appropriate, given our proximity.”

Somebody was bound to make an Einstein joke. Glad it wasn’t me.

“Do you like cheese steaks, Detective Rosen?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Ira will explain it to you on the ride back to your father’s house. Welcome aboard.” O’Connor patted my back. He knew I wasn’t about to shake his hand. He did, however, hold his left hand out to me. “The shield, son. You’ll have to earn it.”

Tossed it in my own puke and walked toward Ira’s car. Heard O’Connor laughing as I walked away.

“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think they will sing to me.”

—T.S. Eliot, from his poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

C
OVER STORY. COVER GIRL.
Women are the perfect camouflage. You could have thought up a thousand elaborate excuses for why I had to leave Brooklyn, why I had to quit Uncle Harry’s, why I had to temporarily part company with Boyle and the boyos, yet none would have done the trick like the mention of a woman. Let me tell you something, it’s men that are the bigger suckers for love. Women look for love. Men look for pussy and stumble onto love. And Christ, when we stumble it’s an endless fall. Who do you think misses their first loves more, men or women? If you say women, you’re a fool.

So when I went to Boyle and told him I’d met someone and that I was moving to Philadelphia to be with her, he didn’t flinch. Fuck, not only didn’t he flinch, the man offered to get me in with some donkeys down Broad Street way. Politely refused, saying that if I was going to do dirt, it would only be on his behalf. Smiled like a proud father. Unnerved me, that smile. Never seen its like from my own dad. With the atmosphere surrounding my mom’s suicide and with Nicky earning like he was, Boyle didn’t give my leaving a second thought. Still O’Connor and Ira thought we should make a bit of a show of it, wanted to prove to Boyle’s crew that there was a girl and that I was smitten.

Didn’t have to pretend, for I
was
smitten, immediately, on the spot, even now. Met at a Starbucks up in Scarsdale: a town of well-to-do Asians and Jews pretending to be Biff and Muffy at the club. Not the kind of place you’d be apt to find Boyle, Griffin or Nicky sipping Pinot Noir by the pool or quietly clapping by the tee box and shouting, “Well struck!”

“You Rosen?” she asked, coming up behind me.

“Last time I checked.” I made to stand.

“Don’t bother. I’m Velez, Leeza Velez.”

God, just thinking about the first time I saw her gives me that odd sensation, a cross between nerves and nirvana. She was about five foot five with elegant curves, straight sable hair that hung just slightly over her shoulders. She had bright brown eyes, a nose and jaw line that plastic surgeons could only hope to reproduce, and a dangerous mouth. Her teeth were even and white, her lips plush but not extravagant. The combination made for an electric smile, make believe though it was.

“Kiss me!”

“What?”

“We’re in love, remember?”

Kissed her awkwardly, like I had a mouth full of braces. Felt about twelve years old.

“Christ, you’ll have to do better than that,” she said. “If we’re being watched, they’re gonna think you’re either a liar or half a fag.”

So I folded her in my arms and kissed her hard on the mouth, my tongue slipping effortlessly between her lips. If she was surprised or displeased, she didn’t show it. Didn’t have to see her in workout clothes to know she was well muscled and strong. Could feel her power. When I pulled back, noticed that in spite of her name, dark skin and vaguely Hispanic features, there was another kind of mojo at work in her.

“Puerto Rican, but not one hundred percent,” I said.

“You taste my kiss and tell me the percentage of spic in my blood? It’s blood, asshole, not red wine.”

“Am I right or what?”

“We’re all mongrels in this country. It makes for beauty and barbarity.”

“A philosopher.”

“A U.S. Marshal. I’m here to keep you safe and watch your ass, not kiss it. I’m not here to suck your dick or wash your clothes,” she said, all the time smiling. “Do we understand one another?”

Smiled back with no pretense. Held my fingers a few inches apart. “So I’m sure you have a file on me this thick, but I don’t know anything about you.”

“What you wanna know?”

“Puerto Rican and…?”

“This shit again!” Caught a glimmer of mischief in her eye. “Guess!”

“Irish.”

“Yeah, some of that.”

“Russian.”

“Some of that, too.”

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Probably.”

“If this is an NYPD gig, why is a U.S. Marshal involved?”

“Cooperation between agencies.”

“Bullshit! Even subway fare jumpers know the Feds and the NYPD cooperate about as well as hyenas and lions. You guys must be getting something out of it.”

“We think Griffin killed one of our witnesses,” she said. “We don’t stand for that.”

Bought us some coffees and she told me how things were going to work. This wasn’t a debate or a negotiation. This was give and take. She gave. I took. She talked. I shut up.

She’d already set us up in an apartment in Philadelphia over by the University of Pennsylvania. It wasn’t the greatest neighborhood, but it was one that would be within our means. We would tell the world that she worked as an administrative assistant in the bursar’s office. When we’d decided to move in together, she had gotten me a job with the university as a maintenance man and I’d had to undergo a few weeks of training before I could take the job.

“How’d we meet?” I snuck in a question as she inhaled.

“Don’t volunteer to explain, makes you look guilty. Anyone asks, and only if they ask, we met in a bar in Sheepshead Bay while I was visiting a girlfriend I went to Brooklyn College with. Don’t get more detailed than that. Anymore questions?”

“Will you marry me?”

Can’t imagine a bullet would have stunned her more. Her face went blank, but she recovered quickly. “Fuck off,” she said. “I’ll see you tonight.”

She kissed me again. This time, it was Leeza Velez kissing like the awkward twelve-year old.

Axel’s on Flatbush Avenue was Nicky’s idea. It was a neighborhood bar about as trendy as a heart attack. Don’t think they’d updated the place since that cocksucker O’Malley had moved the Dodgers. You had to hand it to Nicky; he wasn’t letting the first money, or, serious wedge, as Boyle might call it, affect him. He was just another Brooklyn asshole. Rage kept him grounded.

Had picked Velez up at the D train stop at Flatbush and Dekalb, kissed her when she got into the car. This time neither of us kissed like a child. We’d gotten past that one bit of awkwardness. Still, she was acting the part. Enjoyed the performance.

“Yes or no?” I asked.

“Yes or no what?”

“It’s only right, you know, when a guy proposes…”

She ignored that. “Tell me a story about you and Nick.”

“You must have a file—”

“No stories in the file.”

Told her about Vinny Podesta and stickball.

Leeza wasn’t Nick’s type. Well, to fuck maybe, but not to love. Had trouble picturing her not being anyone’s type. And not that I could wager on it, but I didn’t figure thieving boyos were exactly up her alley. Then why the fuck was I sick with jealousy at watching Leeza and Nick shoot a game of Eight Ball? For fuck’s sake, was this what pure rage was like? If it was, then God had put his finger on my shoulder. Knowledge was revealed.

Rage got me as high as I’d ever been. It was coke and crystal meth cooked until it turned black and thick as breakfast syrup.
Excuse me, waiter, can I have some rage for my pancakes?
Christ, I tell you I could have killed them both and myself in that brief second. Saw in that moment that I was both my mom and dad; so empty that I would kill for a woman who was in all ways but her kiss, a stranger; so full of pain I wanted to do it. Drank my Sam Adams instead. On the whole, a better idea.

“Watch out for that one,” Nicky said, coming back to the bar for another round.

My heart jumped into my throat, but I managed a question. “How so?”

“She loves you. Love’s trouble.”

My heart found its way back into my chest. Nick needed to stick to rage and hot wiring cars. Clearly, he was no expert on the subject of love.

“It’s a little late for that, Nicky.”

“You’re fucked.”

Didn’t I know it?

A devilish, crooked smiled cracked his face.

“What’s up with you?” I asked.

“You told her about how I kicked the shit outta Vinny P., huh?”

“Had to tell her something good about you and it was the only thing I could think of.”

“Nice.”

“I try.”

“You ever think about Vinny P.?” Nick wondered. “I do sometimes.”

“Probably in Elmira doing a ten-year bid and taking it up the ass for cigarette money.”

“Hope he knows smoking’s bad for his health.”

“Imagine what we’d be saying about him if we really didn’t like him.”

Nick patted my cheek. “Fuck Vinny Podesta! I’m gonna miss you, bro.”

“Me too.”

“Okay,” he said. “Time to get back there and get my ass kicked again by your girlfriend.”

“And as I watched I felt, quite suddenly, as bleak and lonely as I had in a long time. Maybe it was because I was still half asleep, or maybe it was the fading light that brought it on. Or maybe it was that, even watching her familiar ritual of dressing and departure, Clare seemed utterly a stranger.”

—Peter Spiegelman,
Black Maps

I
GOT TRAINING ALL
right, but it had little to do with picking up stray papers with a pointy stick. During my time in Philadelphia, don’t think I once set foot on the university campus. Ask me the school’s colors and I couldn’t tell you. My waking hours were consumed by two things: learning to be a cop and convincing Leeza Velez I was worth loving. Even now I’m not sure how successful I was at either.

Every day, bag lunch in hand, I left our third-floor walkup at 6:15
AM
. Dressed in my green coveralls and steel-toed work boots, I’d start walking to the campus and turn down an alley. There I’d climb into the back of a work van that had been booty from a drug seizure and off I went. It was an odd life, one layer of façade atop another layer of bullshit, covering a charade. But hey, if the vacuum of my parents’ lives had prepared me for anything, it was this: It’s hard to lose yourself when you don’t know who the fuck you are to begin with.

What was different for me was that I was on the accelerated plan. My training began the minute I got into the van and didn’t stop until the van dropped me off at 6:00
PM
. Took some classes at the Philadelphia Police Academy and had private classes with cops from Philly and NYPD instructors. Sometimes I felt like a guy with a funnel down his throat. These guys were shoving food down as fast as they could and it was all I could do not to choke. Think I absorbed it more than learned it.

Only part I enjoyed was my weapons training. It wasn’t like I hadn’t carried for years, but I never really knew what the hell I was doing. You buy a Glock on the street, guy doesn’t offer to teach you how to use it.
Man, think of it like one of them idiot-proof cameras, aim and shoot. Lens cap’s like the safety. Don’t forget to take it off. You hear what I’m sayin’?
Was encouraged to spend hours on the range. Got proficient with a 9mm. I was fucking magic with a .38, felt like an extension of myself.

No one ever told me to imagine the paper target as someone I hated. Did that all on my own. One day it was Boyle, the next day Griffin. My favorite target was O’Connor. I’d imagine him calling me lad or son and I’d start pumping slugs into where his fat neck rolls would have been.

About a month into my cram course, started doing ride-alongs in patrol cars, one or two nights a week. I was strictly forbidden to participate. Was there to watch and learn. It was during this time I met a skell who’d raped his sister and killed her friend. What a twisted piece of shit. Told me his folks had both died of cancer. As if I gave a rat’s ass. Was the cancer, he claimed, that had wrecked his head.

“How’s that, scumbag?”

“It’s coming for me, the cancer, man. At night, I can’t sleep cause I hear the clock ticking, the cancer clock.”

Like that explained it all. Like that explained anything.

Meanwhile, Leeza Velez and I settled into this parallel universe existence. We lived separate lives together. Made it really clear that she wasn’t interested in discussing her life with me and was less interested in discussing mine, that as long as the world bought our act and I kept drawing breath, it met her expectations. I was less satisfied with the arrangement, though there was little I could do about it.

The one reprieve I got from life behind the invisible partition came on Friday and Saturday nights. Maintenance work wasn’t rocket science and no one would buy that I had to stay in on weekends cramming for my exams on leaf raking. And since our cover was that we were in love, we had to go out and act the parts. Bar scene in Philly was fun and several-fold less pretentious than Manhattan’s. Although Velez steadfastly refused to share any details of her life beyond the limits of her current assignment, she was more willing to let me talk about growing up in Brooklyn, about my folks, about Nicky and the old block. She even laughed sometimes when I’d tell her about the shit Nicky and me used to pull.