3 Quarters Page 17

  Shine’s office was more space age, replete with computer, fax and photocopy machines, and a multipaneled telephone system. The retired cop was enjoying showing off his house. Bobby had never known Shine to be materialistic, but in middle age, men with no children tend to take great pride in their possessions. The place was magnificent, Bobby thought.

  Withdrawn, paranoid, laconic, Bobby wasn’t being such a great friend to a guy who was showing him some genuine human hospitality. Bobby was out of jail, but jail wasn’t out of him yet.

  “You okay?” Shine asked.

  “Sorry,” Bobby said. “I’m still decompressing. Your house is wonderful.”

  “At the risk of being politically incorrect—house tours are for women. The only thing I wish I had was a finished basement. No one in Windy Tip has basements, because of the sand, so I can’t take you downstairs to the bar for a beer and game of pool.”

  “Then take me to the bar down the beach,” Bobby said.

  “The Central Booking?” Shine said. “That’s owned by Barnicle. His guys hang out there. In fact, there’s a christening party going on there today. But the bar sec-don is still open to the public.”

  “Even better,” Bobby said.

  “It’ll drive Barnicle nuts to see you walk in his joint,” Shine said with a salty grin.

  “Good. Then by all means, let’s go.”

  On the way they passed Lou Barnicle’s house again, but Sandy was nowhere to be seen. Her blue Explorer was still parked in the driveway, a plastic tricycle nearby.

  “What do you know about Cis Tuzio’s past?” Bobby asked.

  “Not much,” Shine said. “Came up the political ranks. Good lawyer.”

  “She friendly with Moira Farrell?”

  “They obviously know each other,” Shine said. “But you could fit most of Brooklyn’s Court Street lawyers at one bar mitzvah. In fact, they probably have on a few occasions.”

  Bobby could hear the roar from inside the barnlike saloon from twenty feet away. Dark green screens covered the bay-front windows, and the alcohol-inflated blare of a party in progress poured out of Central Booking, which was a concrete-block-and-stucco affair with a sloping clay-tiled roof. Bobby and John Shine walked in through the screen door from the bright sun to the dark, cool barroom.

  Bobby recognized at least two-dozen cops—both retired and on the job—wives or girlfriends, their kids, all celebrating a christening. A Catholic priest jovially worked the crowd. Many of these people had been at the Christmas party where Bobby had met Dorothea. He recognized Kuzak, Zeke, and two very young faces in the room, guys in their twenties, and tried to place them. Then he realized that it was the absence of police uniforms that kept him from immediately putting names to the cherubic faces: Caputo and Dixon, the two cops he’d encountered with Tom Larkin.

  In the far corner of the room Bobby noticed men in business suits at a round table. A small, balding older man surrounded by large young men who Bobby was certain were cops.

  “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink,” Shine said.

  Bobby followed Shine toward the bar, his eyes still on the rear round table. Shine put his arm around Bobby’s shoulder and eased him up to the bar. The bartender dried his hands on a bar towel and shook Shine’s hand; then he turned to Bobby and froze. Bobby recognized O’Brien right away. He was the cop whom Zeke and Kuzak had propositioned in the men’s room about three-quarters at that long-ago Christmas party. The same O’Brien who ran out of the men’s room after Bobby stepped out of the stall. The same O’Brien who put a quarter in the phone at The Anchor in Gerritsen Beach the night Bobby was drugged and charged with Dorothea’s murder.

  “Hey, O’Brien,” Bobby said.

  O’Brien nodded and said, “Emmet.”

  This brought a halt to the conversation nearest them, and then the rest of the afternoon bar crowd began to quiet down, as they turned to look at Bobby Emmet. The only sounds came from the party room, where the band played “All My Exes Live in Texas.”

  “Long time no see,” Bobby said.

  “Yeah,” O’Brien said, and nodded to a patron and then at the party room. Bobby knew O’Brien was calling for backup.

  “Fact, you said you didn’t even remember seeing me in The Anchor that night . . . .”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” O’Brien said.

  “How’s the job, O’Brien?” Bobby asked, staring him dead in the fidgety eyes.

  O’Brien looked around, and now slowly, one by one, Kuzak, Zeke, Lebeche, Daniels, Flynn, Levin, Caputo, and Dixon started drifting from the party room into the barroom. They stood in a loose, wordless semicircle behind Bobby and Shine.

  “Retired,” O’Brien said offhandedly. “What’re you having?”

  “Get out on three-quarters?” Bobby asked.

  “I got hurt. I’m not a well man.”

  “No, no, you’re not well,” Bobby said. “The man part you never were.”

  “I don’t have to take this shit,” O’Brien said, throwing down the bar towel, shaking, his eyes skittering around to the faces of the other off-duty cops. Many of them wore their guns in plain view. “I don’t have to serve you . . . .”

  “If I’m buying, you will,” Shine said in a low, firm voice that dripped with authority.

  “Make it a roofies cocktail,” Bobby said. “Your special.”

  O’Brien swallowed, blinked, his face a tangle of tics. He said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Bobby turned and saw the other cops staring with smoldering eyes. Nobody moved.

  Then at the round corner table at the rear of the dining room, Bobby noticed Hanratty and another cop from the Brooklyn DA’s office stand and abruptly escort the small, balding older man out a side door into a blinding rectangle of sunlight. Bobby thought the man looked like Sol Diamond, Brooklyn district attorney.

  “Wasn’t that . . .?” Bobby began to ask Shine.

  “Yep,” Shine said.

  “Give Bobby Emmet whatever he’s drinking,” came a deep voice from the front door. Lou Barnicle walked into his saloon, wearing the aviator glasses he’d had on earlier, a pistachio-colored suit, and white shoes. Sandy was holding her bright-eyed son by one hand, the other hand holding a large gift-wrapped box.

  “Nice place, Lou,” Bobby said. “I saw your fine house down the beach. BMW and an Explorer in the driveway. Beautiful lady. Little boy in blue. Luckily he looks more like the mother than you——”

  Barnicle turned to Sandy. “Go sit down.”

  “What’s my name?” Sandy said. “Lassie?”

  “I’m talking men’s talk here,” Barnicle said.

  “Then act like a man,” she said. “For a change.”

  Sandy looked at Bobby and led her son toward the party room.

  “Have a nice quiet drink, Bobby,” Lou Barnicle said softly. “I’ll see no one bothers you.”

  “I guess my future is looking up,” Bobby said. “Excops live like ex-presidents these days.”

  “All hard-earned, Bobby. Every dime.”

  The men at the bar focused on Barnicle and Bobby. Shine had a crooked smile on his face, enjoying the exchange.

  “Let me ask you a question, Lou,” Bobby said.

  “Shoot,” Barnicle said.

  “When that little boy of yours grows up, you ever gonna tell him the truth about where his daddy the civil servant police officer got all his money?”

  Sandy had said that the kid wasn’t even his, and Bobby knew this would make Barnicle all the more sensitive. He would have to fake a father’s indignant pride. Everything about him was a lie.

  Barnicle removed the sunglasses and stared at Bobby with cold cobalt eyes.

  “Maybe you should skip the drink and go for a nice quiet walk,” Barnicle said, no trace of emotion in his voice.

  “Are you gonna tell him you want him to grow up to be just like dear old Dad?” Bobby asked. “Follow your flatfoot footsteps on the bagman route?”

  B
obby stepped closer, mimicking Barnicle.

  “ ‘Okay, Junior,’ ” Bobby mocked,” ‘you put on your shiny policeman’s badge, and now you go get the gambling skim from that nice gangster with the flat nose over there.’ Or, “Go tell that nice drug dealer with the machine gun over there that you want a piece of his action so you will turn your eyes and your badge the opposite way.’ ”

  “You’re out of line,” Barnicle said. “Shine, maybe you should go read Bobby here some of your poetry. Teach him some manners.”

  Shine smiled and said, “I’m rather enjoying his recital.”

  Bobby stepped closer to Barnicle. Kuzak and Zeke made a move toward him, but Barnicle held up a hand to stop them.

  “Or ‘Okay, Junior, now go rig a three-quarters medical pension for that phony able-bodied cop over there so he can collect taxpayers’ money for life.’ ”

  “You better leave while you still got a life,” said Flynn, the Gibraltar goon who looked like a marine poster.

  The priest walked into the bar area with a smile on his face and a beer in his hand. “Is everything all right here, boys? It looks like Judas is ready to kiss Jesus in the garden.”

  “Everything is fine, padre,” Barnicle said, leading the priest to the side, handing him an envelope.

  The other cops stared at Bobby, ready for Barnicle to give the signal to tear him apart. Shine put a hand on Bobby’s shoulder.

  “The odds stink,” Shine said, nodding toward the others. “They don’t stand a chance. Let’s go.”

  Bobby smiled and followed Shine out the door.

  25

  MONDAY

  “Tell me, Officer Grabowski, how often do you eat in Kirsch’s Kosher Dairy Deli?” Gleason asked as he paced in front of the young uniformed cop on the witness stand at the pretrial hearing in Queens County Courthouse. It was Monday, 10:30 AM. Bobby had given Gleason one simple usable fact that he had gleaned from his time with Herbie, and Gleason spun a defense out of it.

  “I eat there almost every day at meal,” Officer Grabowski said, looking at Gleason, who jingled some coins in the pants pocket of his beige Armani suit, winking at Alana, who sat next to Bobby in the third row of the courtroom. Alana smiled at Gleason, and for the first time Bobby noticed her newly capped teeth.

  “So, Officer Grabowski, we’re talking about five times a week, that you eat there,” Gleason said, walking to the defense table, where Herbie Rabinowitz sat in a dark suit, cleanly shaved, wearing his yarmulke, looking as innocent as a baby’s rattle.

  “That would be correct, Counselor,” Grabowski said.

  Gleason picked up what appeared to be a menu from the defense table and held it in his hands, behind his back.

  “And what do you usually order?” Gleason asked, his voice booming, as he began to thumb through the menu of Kirsch’s Kosher Dairy Deli.

  “Objection,” a petite female assistant district attorney said. “Relevance. His tone, badgering, Your Honor.”

  Gleason looked up at the judge. His name was Popadopolous, and he had a face like a basset hound’s, with droopy eyes and baggy jowls.

  “Is this going somewhere besides a calorie count, Gleason?”

  “You betcha, Judge,” Gleason said.

  “Cut to the entrée, then,” Popadopolous said, turning to the ADA. “And, Counsel, he isn’t badgering. Gleason talks in that tone to pet parakeets. Overruled. Answer the question, Officer Grabowski.”

  “It depends on the shift,” Grabowski said. “If I’m working nights, I always get a turkey sandwich platter and a Coke. Mornings, lox and bagels and a coffee.”

  “You’re positive about that?”

  “Positive,” Grabowski said with a confident sneer. “I know what I eat.”

  “Nothing wrong with your memory, then?”

  “No, my memory is perfect.”

  “Okay,” Gleason said as he approached Grabowski and looked him dead in the eye, this time lowering his voice to a near whisper.

  “How much does a turkey sandwich platter cost in Kirsch’s Kosher Dairy Deli, Officer Grabowski?”

  The cop looked at Gleason and his pink face quickly blanched.

  “I’m not sure . . . .”

  “How about lox and bagels?”

  “Relevance!” shouted the ADA as she rose to her feet.

  “Goes to memory, Judge,” Gleason said, turning, winking at Alana again. Bobby sat impressed and amused. He looked at Alana, who kept grinning, showing off her new teeth. It was quickly becoming a gold-star morning for Izzy Gleason.

  “Overruled,” Popadopolous said. “Answer the question.”

  “I’m not sure,” the nervous, sweaty cop said.

  “What about coffee?” Gleason asked. “You eat in this place for the past three years, five times a week, surely you must know how much a cup of coffee costs.”

  “I dunno,” Grabowski said. “A half a buck. A dollar . . .”

  “What about a soda, Officer Grabowski?”

  “No idea.”

  “You know you are under oath, Officer Grabowski, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “And that if you lie here, you can be charged with perjury? Lose the job and the pension?”

  “Yeah,” Grabowski said, shifting in his seat, clearing his throat.

  “So I am going to ask you to answer the next question honestly because there are many witnesses who can attest to the truth.”

  There was a long silence as Gleason turned his back on Grabowski, took a sip of water, ignoring Alana this time, his eyes as glazed as those of a shark heading for meat, and then turned and strode directly to Grabowski until his face was inches from the young cop’s nose. He shouted, “Have you ever, in three years, five days a week, ever paid for a single meal in Kirsch’s Kosher Dairy Deli, Police Officer Grabowski?!”

  “Ob-jec-tion!” the ADA shouted, launching to her feet.

  “Goes to memory, credibility, and moral turpitude, Judge.”

  “O-ver-ruled!” snapped Popadopolous.

  The cop wet his dry, trembling lips. He looked as if he were gagging on his Adam’s apple. He squirmed in his seat, looked at the judge, who glared down at him. When he finally answered, his voice rose steadily to a soprano, “What’s that, you know, like, I dunno, got to do with that big ape hitting me?”

  “Nonresponsive, Your Honor,” Gleason said.

  “Duly stricken,” the judge said, and glowered at the composting cop. “Answer the question, Officer.”

  “I can’t remember,” Grabowski said.

  “Have you ever written a parking ticket for any customer who double-parked outside Kirsch’s Kosher Dairy Deli? Or do you look the other way in return for the free nose bag?”

  “I can’t remember,” Grabowski said again.

  “In three years you can’t remember whether or not you ever paid for a meal or wrote a ticket at Kirsch’s Kosher Dairy Deli?” Gleason asked.

  “That’s right,” Grabowski said. “I can’t, whomyacallit, remember for sure . . . too clear . . . I guess my memory isn’t as great as I said . . . sometimes.”

  Grabowski took a deep slug from his water with a trembling hand. Bobby knew the cop couldn’t answer either way. If Grabowski said he did pay his meal tabs and Gleason had witnesses that would say he never paid, he could be fired and charged with perjury. If he said he took free meals, he would be fired anyway. All he could do was claim he couldn’t remember. If he couldn’t remember paying a meal tab in three years, how the hell could he remember what happened in a melee in which he was cold-cocked? The prosecution’s case was going down in flames.

  “Your Honor,” Gleason screeched in his high-pitched voice, “I ask that these charges be dismissed for lack of credible evidence. This witness is a bad joke!”

  Popadopolous nodded to the ADA. She just sagged and waved her hand. The judge banged the gavel and looked at Grabowski.

  “Son,” Popadopolous said, “I was you, I’d get me some Maalox for the indigestion you g
ot coming when I contact your superiors. Case dismissed.”

  He banged his gavel, and Grabowski raced out of the courtroom, holding his hat over his crotch, looking as if he needed to find a men’s room.

  Bobby had seen Gleason in action before, but his performance this morning assured him that the lawyer was well on his way to a brilliant comeback.

  “Am I an alchemist or what?” Gleason said to Bobby, pointing to Alana’s dazzling smile. “In return, I’m handling the dentist’s divorce. Eventually, I might need you to follow his wife around.”

  Herbie walked over to Bobby and shook his hand and hugged him.

  “I can’t thank you enough, Bobby,” he said. “Now that I don’t have to worry about the cops, all I have to deal with is the . . . Italian fellows.”

  That morning, while Bobby watched Gleason’s performance in Queens, the two uniformed housing-unit cops named Lebeche and Daniels sat in their radio car on West Twenty-first Street off Surf Avenue outside the Coney Island projects. Slumping in the backseat was a black snitch named Rollo.

  “Dealer’s name is Martinez,” Rollo said, a hoodie pulled up over his head, dark shades shielding his eyes. Rollo was being cautious, although he knew that no one even remotely connected to the Coney Island drug trade would be awake before noon.

  “Which apartment?” asked Daniels.

  “ ’Partment Four-E. He got enough product to keep alla Coney high till day afta Christmas. I don’t know where he keep his cash, but he stash his product under the box where his pit bull keep her puppies. Anybody but Martinez go near the fuckin’ puppies, they lunch. Now, what you gots to do is, you knock twice. Wait a few second. Knock two time again more. He always send his wife to answer the door. That her job. She ask in Spanish who it is. You gotta say one word—‘Boardwalkbrown.’ ”

  “That’s two words,” said Daniels.

  “Say it like that fast, spic fast, like,” he said. “Like ‘Boardwalkbrown.’ That his nickname for his shit. Mexican brown heroin. Good, too. I could unload it fass. Niggas be comin’ from all over Brooklyn for Boardwalkbrown.”