Mitchell Smith (14 page)

“Will you take it easy?” Ellie said, seeing the child, boy or girl, still at the parted curtain to the left, wideeyed.“We’re just here on the job-we’re not going to bother you. Call your husband on the phone

… maybe he can drive out here for a few minutes, talk with us.”

The thin woman, panting, listened to none of it. “Are you going’ to get out of here? -Are you going’ to get out?

You better get the fuck out of here-I’m tellin’ you!”

She seized the inside handle to the screen door with both hands, wrenched at it-then suddenly shoved it partly open to strike against Ellie’s raised arm, slammed it shut again, then open-and-shut in Ellie’s face several times, as if that would force her off the steps, drive her away.

Ellie saw herself wrestling with this frantic woman, struggling with her in front of her child … a screaming child seeing its mother knocked down, knelt on, handcuffed … all the neighbors watching from across the street.

The screen door flying half open at her again, Ellie kicked it shut, hard, leaned into it to keep it closed, and said to the woman, their faces very close, screen separated, “-If you don’t shut your mouth and step back, I’m going to drag your ass out here and put the cuffs on you in front of the whole fucking neighborhood!”

Their faces were close enough that Ellie could smell the woman’s breath, a little sour with her smoking, her fright. Charley Ambrosio must be a grim husband.

“All right, now-let go that door.”

The thin woman avoided Ellie’s eyes, then took her hands off the door handle.

“You O.K., now?” Ellie said. “-You finished making a fool of yourself?

In front of your kid?”

The thin woman looked at the floor. She seemed a sort of brittle girl, nothing much behind her bluff. Ellie supposed, though, that Ambrosio loved her, to dress her up that way. She wasn’t bad-looking. She had nice eyes, anyway.

“Are you calmed down, now?”

The woman nodded, still looking down at the floor.

“We’re not here to bother you,” Ellie said. “O.K.?”

The thin woman cleared her throat, and nodded.

“What’s your name?”

“Doris.” Tears waiting.

“Doris-you tell your husband that we came by. We’re from Headquarters, downtown. You tell him we hear he’s spending a lot of money. -You know what I mean?”

Doris had nothing more to say. Wouldn’t raise her head, either.

Ellie saw the curtain in the left front window shift and fall closed.

The child, boy or girl, was now seeing Mama quiet.

Nardone had heard some yelling from the front-raised voices-and supposed that Ellie was busy with the ladies of the house, whatever. He’d seen a big new bass boat, with white Kevlar swivel chairs fore and aft, parked on its trailer just behind the house. -First thing he’d seen.

Looked like Sergeant Ambrosio took his vacations upstate, spent a lot of time out on the lakes. -Second thing seen was a brandnew Buick (a LeSabre, four-door, cream and dark blue) parked alongside their garage.

The big garage door was locked, had a padlock on it. Nardone didn’t see himself busting a guy’s padlock-not if he could help it.

Voices still from the front.

The bass boat and Buick filled Ambrosio’s yard right up; guy was out of room, except for the garage. Nardone walked around to the left side, and found the window there covered with brown paper. -Man was a private sort of guy, apparently. Nardone walked to the back of the small yard, and started to squeeze along between the back of the garage and a low chain-link fence. There looked to be a little window back there, high up.

“So, what’s going’ on?”

Nardone turned, wedged in, and saw an old Jewish guy across the fence, sitting in a lawn chair in his bathing suit under a leafed-out grape arbor in the next yard. The old man had been reading the Post; now, he put it down and looked at Nardone.

“I’m a police officer. -We got a report there was vandals back in the yard here. Kids.” Nardone got his ID case out, showed the tin, and the old guy squinted to see it. He had glasses thick as bottle bottoms.

“That’s a good one,” the old guy said. “That’ll be the day-vandals go in that yard!”

Nardone stepped sideways between the fence and the back of the garage until he got to the window. The window was too high to look into, standing there.

“-What’s so special about this yard?” He reached up, got his hands on the narrow sill, and chinned himself up so he could just see in.

“You ever meet that guy?” the old man said. “-Ambrosio?”

“No.” There was a Nissan in the garage, a new Z car.

It was medium green or blue-hard to tell with no light in there. “No, I never met him.”

“You met the guy, you wouldn’t ask.”

Nardone lowered himself, brushed off his hands, sidled back along the chain-link fence. “Rough guy, huh?”

“He’s a cop.”

“I’m a cop. -I’m a nice guy.”

“That’s a good one,” the old man said. “-I was assistant court clerk in Brooklyn. Tell me how nice cops are, Makin’ cases. -You go meet Mr.

Ambrosio; you tell me you want him to catch you in his yard sometime.”

“Lousy neighbor, huh?”

“I’m not sayin’ anything.”

“He’s got some nice stuff here,” Nardone said, but the old man quickly picked up the Post, high enough to cover his face, and began to read it.

He said something from behind the paper, but Nardone didn’t catch it.

-There was something else, though, some kind of muttering talk y the house. At first, Nardone thou ht it came from the front, Ellie and somebody there, but it was closer. He walked down the side of the garage, and there was an old lady, must have been eighty or ninety years old-very old-standing there in a blue housedress with lace on the collar. Nice-looking old lady, very old, white hair up on her head. She was staring at him, talking in Italian, not loud, conversational …

some sort of old country talk. Real peasant stuff.

The old woman put her finger up to her left eye and pulled the lower lid down and goggled the eye at him. -She was cursing him out like mad; he got that, all right. Bad stuff, too. His balls . . . she was talking about his balls. -How they should dry up and rot off him. Real old-country shit. She wasn’t embarrassed to be saying it, either. There she was, looking like she belonged in some old folks’ home or something, just cursing everything he had … balls, whatever. Now, she wanted his eyes …

the juice in his eyes to turn into pus.

“Listen,” Nardone said to her in very bad Italian. He hardly knew any real Italian at all, just street stuff from when he was a kid.

“Listen-you’re making’ an asshole out of yourself. Go back inside.”

The old lady reacted badly to hearing that. -Nardone was afraid she was going to drop dead right there in front of him. She kept it up with the curses, though, and began to goggle both eyes at him, pulling down on the lower lids so the red showed like a big dog’s. -And all the time going with the curses. Now, she was giving him cancer.

It was a no-win thing. -Strictly a no-winner.

Nardone gave the old lady the horns with his right thumb and little finger, just in case it might help, and headed back down the drive. He heard the old Jewish guy laughing from the other yard, because the old lady was right behind him, still talking that conversational Italian to his back. She was after any kids he had, now, very unpleasant. It wasn’t so funny to hear somebody cursing your kid. It was like that was what had happened to Marie-this old asshole’s curses got back in time and did that to her.

There was nothing pleasant about it. -He would have liked to turn around and kick that old lady’s ass, was what he would have liked.

Nardone got to the Ford, jumped in behind the wheel, and put up the side window right in the witch’s face. -A nice-looking old lady, too. Not so nice goggling her eyes and spitting on his side window. Looked like she wanted to tear him apart.

Ellie came around the front of the car-paying no attention to the old lady-and climbed in the passenger side. Nardone could see she was trying not to laugh must have been watching the old woman chase him down the driveway.

“It’s not as funny as you think,” he said. Then she laughed.

“I’m sorry, Tommy,” she said. But she didn’t stop laughing, on and off, until they parked at Gandy’s Bayside and went in for lunch.

While they waited for their orders-Reubens and coffees-Ellie said,

“Well, that’s a hot spot; his wife is wearing a mint, and she’s real scared.”

“Forget that; the guy’s got maybe sixty thousand bucks worth of new stuff in the back. And whatever he’s driving’ to work can tow a boat

… and you can bet it’s brandnew, too. -He’s a fuckin’ thief, that’s all. Him and his buddies grabbed some cops steppin’ back for some gambler-” —And he’s stepping back for the cops.”

“That’s exactly right. The man is a thief, period.”

The waitress-a pleasant Puerto Rican girl with frosted hair and a slight mustache-brought their coffees, and sweetener for Ellie. Her uniform was very clean, starched -it was a well-run restaurant. The booths were new white vinyl.

“We could make a case on that guy,” Ellie said.

“They’re not making’ cases on these people-they’re throwin’ scares.

-Last thing the Department needs right now is more cases against cops.

Not going’ to do it. So we can forget that. -So listen, Connie’s doin’

a big dinner a week from this Sunday. She’s doin’ it for this Patty; a couple other people’ll be there, and she wants you to come. But Charley’s going’ to be there. Patty and him were buddies.”

“That’s all right; I want to come. -I like Charley.

Connie shouldn’t worry-“

“Well, you know … an awkward thing. Awkward for both of you. You know - “

“There’s no problem. Tell Connie I’m happy to come.”

“O. K. One week after this comin’ Sunday, six o’clock.

Connie says don’t bring anything. Nothin’. No wine, nothin’.”

“Right.

“I mean it. Don’t bring anything. She’s getting’ the wine; she’s getting’ everything.”

“O.K.”

The waitress came with their sandwiches, potato chips and pickles on the side. “You want water?”

“Yeah,” Nardone said, “bring us some when you come back, O.K.?”

“O.K.” She walked back toward the kitchen, her tray tucked under her arm.

“Mustard?” Ellie passed it to him.

Nardone tried to pry up the top piece of toast on his sandwich. “This thing isn’t comin’ apart-I’ll skip the mustard. Whatever I got in here, that’s what I’m going’ with.”

“We head back to the East Side?”

“We eat, we’re on our way. -Figure we’re going’ to make headlines with that little whore, right? -Prostitute.”

“It’s a real case, Tommy. -I don’t know why they gave it to us, but I’m grateful for it.”

“That’s easy. -We got it so they can keep tabs. They’re ared who she was sleepin’ with, that’s all. It’s bullshit.”

:‘But it’s a real case, just the same.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s a homicide case-no bullshit about that.”

“it was a terrible way to go … what happened to her,” Ellie said, and ate a piece of pickle.

of You tell me a good way,” Nardone said, took a bite his Reuben, chewed and swallowed, `-and that’s the way I’m going’.”

The tram swung steadily up out of night into evening.

At this height, the setting sun still shone, the upper air yet held the light, while below, deep in darkness, the sluggish river lay like lead as they crossed over. Ellie, tired, leaned from a strap alongside a man carrying a little girl, asleep, on his shoulder.

Keneally had walked into the apartment-which still smelled slightly of cooking-while she and Tommy were peeling back the carpets. He’d thought that pretty funny.

“It’s the new Homicide guys—checking’ the rugs! I saw your shitty car out front. Let me ask you guys something’, O.K.?” He’d sat on the couch with a grunt. “-You aces think to check her phone?”

“We’ll get the records at the phone company, tomorrow.

“Honey-you aren’t going’ to get shit at the phone company, tomorrow. I figured I’d do you a favor and check, and found out just what I figured.

-This whore used Eddie’s. You know Eddie’s-the registry?”

“We know it, Kenny. -Why don’t you get the fuck out of here?” Nardone, grimy, jacket off, shirtsleeves rolled up, kneeling half under the runner in the hall.

“I was talkin’ to the lady-but if you know it, hotshot, maybe you know that registry’s got twenty phones going’ day and night; got maybe eighty, a hundred subscribers each phone; get maybe five, ten calls a day each one. -you figure it out, foolin’ around with that rug, there.

You can figure maybe half those calls are pay phones, too. Figure all that out, wise guy-tell me you don’t have maybe ten thousand calls going’ through in a week or two.

Eddie’s don’t keep no numbers records.” Keneally shook a cigarette out of a pack, and lit it with a transparent lighter, a green one, almost out of fuel. “You guys figure it out. -Jack the Ripper could have called this whoreyou guys’ll never know it.”

“We’ll check with the registry, anyway,” Ellie had said.

Keneally, bulky in an ugly brown-plaid summer suit, had given her an odd, measuring look, his lumpy, red face intent as if he faced a suspect. “-That’s O.K.,” he said. “Go ahead, waste your time, you don’t figure I’m tellin’ you the truth-tryin’ to make you look bad or something’.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Shit you didn’t. -Let me tell you guys, Maxfield’s little brown nuts are bangin’ together over havin’ this case pulled. He went to Goodman about it. You guys haven’t made any buddy out of Maxfield.”

“Oh, dear … oh, goodness gracious,” Nardone said from the hall.

“Well, don’t say I didn’t tell you. -You find anything’ in here?”

“Get the fuck out of here, Kenny.” Nardone got up, hauled at the long runner so that it flapped heavily and fell folding to the left along the hall wall.

“You ever hear of anybody hidin’ something’ under a friggin’ hall runner?” Keneally had glanced at Ellie and winked at her.