“I’ll take it,” Bobby said.
He slapped the gun away with his left hand and smashed the pint of Four Roses on the side of the man’s head. As the glass broke against bone, the ski mask was drenched in iced tea.
But the blow only dazed the larger man.
As he hurled his body on top of Bobby, both falling to the ground, he landed two solid punches to Bobby’s temple and one to his lip.
“Gonna kill you, bum,” the man said, wrapping a large gloved hand around Bobby’s throat and pressing down hard. “Gonna fuckin’ kill you.”
“I keep tellin’ you,” Bobby managed to say, his words garbled. “I ain’t no bum.”
The two girls sat frozen in place, staring at the struggle in front of them. T.J. and Tommy started the Plymouth and roared out from behind the park station, rear tires kicking up dust and leaves, the red cherry on top of the unmarked car twirling.
Bobby turned his head slightly to the right and spotted the .38 Special on the ground, inches from his hand. His legs were wrapped tight around the man’s waist. Bobby landed two quick punches to the man’s face, both with little effect. He was having trouble breathing, lungs searing with pain, his throat clutching. The glare of T.J.’s headlights illuminated the man’s large frame. His weight sat like a boulder on Bobby’s chest.
Bobby closed his eyes, took a short breath through his nose, and stretched the fingers of his right hand, tearing the back of his coat as it scraped across the black concrete. But he reached the .38.
T.J. and Tommy were out of the Plymouth, their guns drawn.
“Let him go,” T.J. said in a relaxed voice. “Don’t even think.”
“You can’t stop me,” the man said, eyes glowing as he pressed down tighter on Bobby’s throat.
“I can,” Bobby said in a raspy whisper.
He had the gun barrel inside the man’s mouth.
The man looked at Bobby, whose gaze was focused and determined.
It was the look Ray Monte had seen before he died.
It was the look of a man ready to kill.
The man slowly released his grip on Bobby’s throat, holding his hands out to his sides. T.J. and Tommy came up next to him, cocked guns aimed at his head. Tommy snapped a cuff around one of the man’s thick wrists and clamped it shut. He swung the arm down to the man’s back, took the other hand, and locked it in cuffs.
“Okay, Rev.,” T.J. said, still holding the gun on the man. “Take the jammer outta his mouth.”
“This piece of shit,” Bobby said between coughs, gun rocking in and out against the man’s teeth. “You see what he did to me?”
“He almost killed you,” Tommy said in a soothing tone. “But he didn’t. Now let him go so we can drop him off at the station, take the girls’ statements, and then go grab us a bite.”
“And if there’s time,” T.J. said, a firm grip on the back of the cuffed man’s jacket, “we’ll come back here and see if we can find somebody else who might wanna kill you.”
“Forget killing me,” Bobby said, his voice cracking with anger. “The fucking bastard pissed all over me!”
• • •
BOBBY SAT ON the living room couch, nursing a Dr Pepper, TV tuned to a late fall Giants-Eagles football game, the sound muted. Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters were playing on the corner stereo, halfway through a rendition of “Drown in My Own Tears.” Outside, heavy snow blanketed the streets.
Albeit Scarponi walked into the room and sat on the far end of the couch, a large tumbler of red wine mixed with water and ice in his right hand. He was wearing a white sweatshirt and black jeans, his feet covered by fur-lined moccasins. He had a three-day gray stubble across his face, and his left hand was slightly swollen, a winter bout with rheumatism starting early.
They sat, as they usually did, in silence, absorbed by the game and the music.
Albert looked away from the screen and stared at his son, as if noticing him for the first time.
“Tomorrow’s the memorial,” Albert said, watching Harry Carson wrap an arm around the Eagles quarterback. “If you want, we can go together. No sense us taking two cars. Not in this weather.”
The sound of his father’s voice startled Bobby. He had grown comfortable with the wall of silence that surrounded them, not quite sure how to react to the sudden cracks conversation brought.
“You sure?” Bobby asked, lifting his legs from the coffee table, eyes on his father.
His father turned his head from the television, strong hands stretched across the tops of his legs. “I think it’s time for us to go together.”
“I usually stop off and pick up some flowers first,” Bobby said.
“Pink roses,” Albert said, nodding.
“I’m sorry, Pop,” Bobby said. “I’m sorry I took her away from you.”
Albert stared at his son, tears flowing from the corners of his eyes. “All these years I blamed you for what happened,” he said. “Now I think, maybe it needed to happen for things to right themselves. Maybe she put herself there thinkin’ it was the only way to get her son back.”
“The man that killed Mama,” Bobby said. “He’s dead.”
“I know,” Albert said.
“I killed him,” Bobby said.
“I know that too,” Albert said. “I don’t know how your mother would have felt about you doing somethin’ like that.”
“How do you feel about it?”
“I’m proud of you, Bobby,” Albert said, speaking his son’s name for the first time since his wife’s death.
• • •
THE CARDBOARD BOXES were torn and piled high in a corner, up against the steep wall of the tenement, mounds of dirty snow and torn plastic garbage bags lodged near their edges. A cold wind, whipping off corners and side streets, blew across their flaps.
Bobby Scarponi sat shivering under the mound of boxes, his back crunched against cold bricks. He had his hands wrapped around a coffee thermos and his legs were folded to his chest. He was wearing black jeans, two pullovers, and a thick blue windbreaker. A Red Sox baseball cap rested backward on his head. A hand radio sat by his side.
“You see anything yet?” From the warmth of a parked car around the corner, Detective Tony Clifton’s voice came crackling over the radio.
“Just my life flashing before my eyes,” Bobby muttered into the box, stretching out his legs and resting the warm thermos between them. “It’s early still. These guys never come out till the soap operas are done.”
“Caddy still parked down front?” Clifton asked.
“Empty and with the windows down.” Bobby stared across the deserted street at the late-model pea-green Cadillac with the Florida plates. “Been there all day.”
“That car sticks out like a set of tits,” Clifton said. “You’d think these guys would show some sense.”
“It ain’t a Mensa reunion, Tony,” Bobby said into the radio. “It’s a drug deal. Unless your stool gave us the wrong feed time.”
“My guy’s never been wrong,” Clifton said. “Just sit tight, Rev., and let the deal go down.”
“Must be warm where you are,” Bobby said, rubbing his hands across the tops of his legs.
“Like Miami in July,” Clifton said.
“Can’t wait till I’m old and slow like you, Tony. Then I can sit in a ratty car, breathing in hot, shitty air, while a real cop does all the work.”
“Tell you what, Rev. Jim,” Clifton said. “If it gets any colder, I’ll stop over at the liquor store and pick up some more boxes. Come around and toss ’em on your pile.”
“I got only two words for you, Tony,” Bobby said, his lower lip shaking. “Carbon monoxide.” Then his eyes shifted across the street. “We got movement,” he said into the radio.
Three men stood in a narrow doorway, hands inside their coat pockets, eyes scanning the silent street. The pea-green Cadillac was parked directly in front of them. The man in the middle, short and bald with a thick black mustache, stepped out of the shadows, mov
ed to the car, opened the passenger door, and got in. He put a cigar with a plastic tip in his mouth and lit it.
Bobby kneeled down on a box, watching.
“Any civilians out with them?” Clifton asked.
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Bobby said. “Everybody in this neighborhood’s a phone call away from an indictment.”
“Let’s keep it clear,” Clifton said. “Just in case.”
“Money man’s already in the car,” Bobby reported.
“His connect can’t be too far away,” Clifton said. “Dealers hate being out in the cold.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Bobby whispered to himself, resting the radio by his leg.
A tan Buick ragtop, lightning bolts painted on its doors, pulled up behind the Cadillac and cut its engine. Five men sat squeezed inside, windows rolled up, breath and smoke clouding the interior.
“Elvis is in the building,” Bobby said into the radio, moving his .38 Special out of its holster and into his right hand.
“Sit tight, Rev.,” Clifton said. “And let it happen. Won’t be long.”
The two men in coats stepped out from the litter of the doorway and walked toward the parked cars. The one on the left, head down against the cold, dug a key from his pocket and opened the trunk of the Cadillac. The one on the right, unbuttoned coat flapping in the wind, stood next to the trunk of the Buick, his hand reaching out to lift it up when the driver popped it from the inside.
Bobby pushed aside one of the box lids, watching as the two men each pulled out identical leather briefcases, walked toward one another, and made the transfer.
“Houston, we have liftoff,” Bobby said into the radio. “Come and get ’em.”
“Hold on to your boxes, Rev.,” Clifton said, slamming a red cherry light on top of his unmarked sedan and jamming the car into gear. “We’re just a phone call away.”
“Try not to hit any innocent bystanders before you get here,” Bobby said, turning the baseball cap brim forward.
“Too late,” Clifton said with a laugh, tossing the radio onto the dashboard.
Bobby Scarponi didn’t see the two teenagers.
Blanketed in the seclusion of his cardboard complex, his only focus was on the two cars, the drug deal, and the bust about to happen. He didn’t see the boys carry the red canisters of gasoline down from the corner Mobil station, lids off, their brains pan-fried with an angel dust and glue omelette, looking to torch the cardboard shanty and the bum who lived inside. They moved quiet as cats, first dousing the edges and then the sides of the tenement wall.
One lit a match and the other leaned over the side of the shaky banister and poured gasoline into the small opening Rev. Jim had cleared for a view.
Then they both laughed.
Bobby knew it the second he tasted the gas and smelled the fumes, his body locked in place, a steady calm engulfing him. He watched the match float down past his shoulder and then felt the sudden rush of heat and saw the blue and yellow of the flames.
He jumped out of his inferno, clothes burning, body torched. He was all smoke and light as he rolled onto the sidewalk, leaving shreds of melted skin and burning fabric in his wake.
He heard the sound of sirens, a steady round of gunshots and shouts coming at him from all directions. He caught a glimpse of Tony Clifton running toward him, gun drawn, his mouth forming words, his weary face burdened with fear.
Then Bobby Scarponi stopped his roll and lay still on the streets of a Brooklyn ghetto, less than a hundred feet from a leather bag filled with a drug he once would have killed someone to snort.
The ex-junkie-turned-cop was sprawled on a sidewalk, charred head hanging over a cracked curb, his partner kneeling beside him, holding a gun on his lap and crying in anger to the heavens.
Rev. Jim heard and saw none of it.
He was once again living inside a dark world.
BOOK TWO
I love war and responsibility and excitement. Peace is going to be hell on me.
—General George S. Patton
7
February 21, 1982
HOLDING A FELT hat with both hands, the man walked through the double wood front doors of Nunzio’s. He squinted, his eyes adjusting to the candlelit room. He stood next to the bar, scanned the empty stools, and turned to the ten small tables lined in rows of five to his left. He looked past the young couple sharing a cold antipasto platter and the three middle-aged women shoulder-hunched over large glasses of red wine.
The face he was looking for belonged to the man at the last table, whose back was to the wall. Framed pictures of Rocky Marciano, Jersey Joe Walcott, and Carmen Basilio hung just above his head. Steam from a large bowl of lentils and sausage filtered past a set of intense eyes, right hand holding a glass half-filled with San Pellegrino.
The man at the table lifted his left hand to wave him over.
“You look like you could use something to drink, Carlo,” Boomer Frontieri said.
Carlo Santori rested his hat on the counter separating table from window, took off his overcoat, and folded it over the back of a wooden chair. Boomer signaled a waiter with two fingers and a pouring gesture, and the waiter appeared immediately with a bottle of Chianti.
Boomer was happy to see his old friend and was about to make a joke, but the expression on Carlo’s face stopped him. The man had come a long way from Jersey to see him, so all Boomer said, very quietly, was “What’s the favor?”
“Jenny’s gone,” Carlo said, his voice cracking, words bursting out, hands gripping the table edge for support.
Boomer put his soup spoon down and took a deep breath, feeling the tinge of pain from the piece of metal still embedded inside a partial lung. Then he stretched out and rubbed the side of his right leg, the one with the scars from three surgeries.
“Tell me what ‘gone’ means,” he said.
“We went away, me and Annie, for the weekend,” Carlo told him, eyes welling up. “Down the shore. We left Jenny and Tony alone at the house. I didn’t think about anything going wrong. I mean, Jesus, we were only a phone call away. One call, Boomer, that’s all.”
“What did go wrong?” Boomer asked. A cop’s edge still colored the question and his eyes never left his friend’s face.
“They took a bus into the city,” Carlo said, forcing the words out. He struggled now to lift a glass of wine to his lips. “Tony’s idea. You know the routine. Check out the city, have a little fun. Not have parents on your back all the time.”
“How far’d they get?” Boomer sipped the Pellegrino, ignoring the wine.
“Port Authority,” Carlo said. “Tony went in to use a bathroom. Told Jenny not to move from her spot. When he got out, she was gone.”
“How long ago?”
“Three days,” Carlo said, biting his lower lip. “Tony raced all over the terminal lookin’ for her. When he gave up, he called me. I could barely make him out. Kept screamin’ into the phone, ‘Daddy, I lost her. I lost her.’”
“Who called the cops?” Boomer asked, finishing off the water. “You or Tony?”
“He did,” Carlo said. “By the time we got back, Tony was already over at the midtown precinct. We took him home, sat by the phone, and waited. We were still waiting when Annie told me to call you.”
“Who’s on it?”
“Maloney’s the lead guy,” Carlo said. “Somebody you know?”
Boomer shook his head. “But I’ve been away awhile.”
Carlo drained his glass of wine and sat in silence, his eyes lost in the distance. He looked over at Boomer, his face flushed. “Tell me she’s not dead, Boomer,” he managed to say. “Please, I beg you. Tell me my baby’s not dead.”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” Boomer said, reaching a hand across the table and gripping Carlo’s forearm. “I’d only be guessing.”
“Take the guess,” Carlo said, tears sliding down his face.
“You don’t have the kind of money that screams ransom.” Boome
r tightened his grip around Carlo. “And Jenny’s not the runaway type. Not from what I remember.”
“Which leaves us what?” Carlo wiped his eyes with the back of a sweater sleeve. “The truth, Boomer. I want bullshit, I can get it from any other cop.”
“Raped and left for dead.” Boomer’s eyes were like hot magnets burning through Carlo’s skin. “Or waiting to be sold to a flesh buyer.”
Carlo didn’t flinch. He almost looked thankful. “I want you to find out which it is,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to find out from some fuckin’ stranger.”
“I’m a retired cop with half a lung and a limp,” Boomer said, releasing his grip. “And I’ve been off the job closing in on two years. There’s not much I can do except put out a few calls, make sure there’s the right kind of follow-up.”
“She’s just another name to them,” Carlo said, his sadness bolstered by defiance. “But she’s a face to you. I’ve known you all my life, Boomer. I don’t think you’ll be happy just making a few phone calls.”
Carlo stood, reached for his hat and coat, and looked down at Boomer. “I’ll be home with Annie,” he said. “She’s counting on you too.”
“You’re betting on an old horse, Carlo.” Boomer sighed. “That’s not a smart thing to do.”
“I’m betting on a friend,” Carlo said. Then he turned and left Nunzio’s, tables now filled with cold and hungry customers.
Boomer looked away, staring out at the windy streets of a frigid winter night. He rubbed at his leg again, the pain always sharper when the temperature dipped below thirty. He thought back to that day in the hospital bed, his small room at Metropolitan shrouded in darkness. The chief of detectives standing above him, smile on his face, a gold shield and a small medal clutched in his hands. “It’s over, Boomer,” the chief whispered. “You can rest now.”
Resting was all he’d been doing these last two years. There were no more doors for him to kick in, no more junkies to roust, no more dealers to take down. And he missed all of it. The stakeouts, the dives into dark rooms, the split-second walk between life and death. They were now only memories.