3 Quarters Page 4

  “What else should I know?”

  “Like I said, personally, I think your first lawyer did an Olympic swan dive off the high board,” Gleason said, stopping to light a cigarette. “Into an empty pool. There’s also a new political climate blowing.”

  He blew out a long stream of smoke for emphasis. He watched it scatter in the country breeze and said, “This is a gubernatorial election year, and there’s a fresh-faced Republican candidate named Gerald Stone running for the statehouse. That primary is thirteen days away.”

  “Stone . . . I vaguely remember him,” Bobby said. “Councilman?”

  “Yeah, law-and-order asshole out of Staten Island. Handsome, Vietnam war hero, a real Mr. Family Values. He’s got the backing of the toughest power brokers in the city and state. Wall Street loves him, and the polls say the people do, too. They say if he pulls this off, he could eventually grin his way right into the fuckin’ White House.”

  “What the hell does any of this got to do with me?” Bobby asked, feeling silly and out of touch, as they paused before entering the Jeep.

  “One of Stone’s first and loudest supporters is Sol Diamond,” Gleason said, and Bobby’s heart sank at the mention of the Brooklyn district attorney whose office prosecuted him. “And since you went away, Cis Tuzio, the assistant district attorney who personally prosecuted you, got promoted to chief assistant district attorney. Your case gave her the bump. If Stone gets nominated and elected, she could get a state supreme court judgeship from him, and Diamond could get appointed to the state appeals court.”

  “Democracy sure hasn’t changed in my absence,” Bobby said.

  “That’s the good news,” Gleason said. ‘The bad news is that Diamond is outraged about your release and has already issued another arrest warrant. I just answered it by phone with the judge’s clerk. Stone will probably drag your name into the final days of the primary race. Cis Tuzio is so livid she’s going to personally prosecute you all over again. Her political future rests on putting you back inside. I already anticipated that she would ask for a ridiculously high bail, pending trial. More good news. I went panhandling and I secured the quarter-mil bail from an angel who prefers to remain anonymous.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s a drug lord or a wise-guy client putting up my bail,” said Bobby.

  “I’m on a comeback, you jerkoff,” Gleason said. “Not a suicide mission. Far’s I know, he’s as clean as a monk’s asshole.”

  “Jesus Christ, Gleason,” Bobby said. “What do I say? How do I call a toad a prince without having to kiss him?”

  “Fuck you, too. Well, deal or what?”

  “Where do I sign?”

  “Uh-uh,” Gleason said. “Legal documents can be broken. I want something better than that from you. See, I know you, Emmet, and you’re from the Brooklyn streets with a ridiculous, romantic sense of gutter honor—man of his word, and all that cornball corner-boy horseshit. So if you’re gonna make a deal with me, I don’t want it in writing. I want a fuckin’ handshake, your word on your street-honor. This way if you welch, I put it on the street you reneged and your word ain’t shit.”

  “And you think people would take your word over mine?” Bobby said.

  “Give it to me, and I can help you straighten out your fucked-up life, if you help me do the same with mine. It won’t always be nice or pleasant, and you’ll probably hate me more often than you like me. And get it straight: I own at least one of your nuts and half your time. But I can keep you out of here for good, back home with your kid. Back out where you can prove your innocence. Get back your rep. Where you can find out what happened to your dame. All that good shit. Or you can come back here and die. Now, do we have a fucking deal or what?”

  Gleason wiped his hand on his pants leg, leaving speed stripes of chocolate on the expensive suit, and held it out.

  “Deal,” Bobby Emmet said, shaking his hand.

  7

  Bobby sat next to Izzy in the backseat of the Jeep Cherokee as a silent, overweight Hispanic woman named Venus drove south from the state prison to the New York State Thruway.

  Bobby looked over his shoulder and saw the white Ford Taurus tailing them.

  He rolled down the Jeep’s tinted window and feasted on the hot, clean country air of late summer as they passed pastures of grazing cattle, farmers driving slow-moving tractors, and fields of bundled hay. Soon it would be fall, the dying season, he thought, the season of the witch.

  Occasionally Bobby looked over his shoulder and saw the Taurus following at a discreet distance, a steady white termite munching the road behind them. He kept thinking about Bluto, the big wounded con, talking of big people who wanted him dead.

  “Car’s following us,” Bobby told Gleason. Gleason turned, and the Taurus disappeared from view in a turn in the road.

  “You’ll be paranoid awhile,” Gleason said. “But it’s a free country, and we got us a ninety-minute ride. We’ll be in the city by ten-thirty, quarter to eleven. Just fuckin’ relax.”

  “I’m free, going home to see my kid, and already I’m being tailed,” Bobby said.

  “You spent your life tailing people,” Gleason said. “Now the fuckin’ gumshoe is on the other foot. Deal with it. Unless he starts shooting, don’t worry about it.”

  “It’s gonna be a long day, with a checklist of people I have to see,” Bobby said. “I’ve waited a long time for this day. And, hey, Izzy, you think it’s right to curse in front of the lady like that?”

  “Venus is Dominican, five three, twelve, maybe fifteen pounds overweight, only speaks Spanish,” Gleason said. “She doesn’t understand word fuckin’ one of English. This here way, you don’t have to watch your fuckin’ lingo in front of her. It’s like having a human V chip.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Bobby said. “She works for you, but she can’t speak English? And you can’t speak any Spanish?”

  “Si,” Gleason said, “señor.”

  Venus laughed uproariously, glancing at Bobby in the rearview mirror. She had beautiful pearl-white teeth, flawless nutmeg-colored skin, and gold earrings that sparkled in the sun that blazed in through the side window.

  Bobby looked over at Izzy Gleason and realized that the next time he was in a courtroom, his life would be in the hands of a madman. But if someone was following him right now, he wanted to be in control.

  “Izzy, ask Venus to pull over, will ya?” Bobby said. “I want to drive.”

  “Venus,” Gleason shouted, pointing to the shoulder of the road. “Pull-o over-o.”

  “Sí, Señor Eeezee.”

  At the Newburg tollbooth, Bobby grabbed the ticket for the thruway south. Gleason was next to him in the passenger seat. Bobby looked in the rearview mirror, searching for a white Taurus. All he saw was Venus sitting in the back wearing headphones, listening to English/Spanish audiotapes Gleason had bought for her. Inglés Sin Barreras—“English Without Barriers.”

  “You sure she can’t understand English?” Bobby asked.

  “Nada.”

  “Then what does she do for you?”

  “She’s losing weight,” Gleason said.

  “She’s losing weight?” Bobby said, nodding. “So . . . you pay her by the hour or the pound for this?”

  “See, I like my women a little imperfect,” Gleason said. “I’m gonna send her to a fat farm where she’ll fast for a week or so and study the English tapes. When she’s finished, drops twelve or fifteen pounds, learns some English, she’s the perfect gal Friday. I help her improve herself, assimilate into the American Dream. She’ll be as loyal as a religious convert. An Izzyette. There used to be legions of them in the good old days. In the end, with a little investment, I’ll have a great-looking, well-educated, loyal worker for the new millennium.”

  “I’m catching on to your game,” Bobby said. “You get a jammed-up ex-cop to do investigations for you and an indebted, slimmed-down fat girl to take dictation. On your lap?”

  “Or my face, but that would be impractical,�
�� Gleason said, grinning. “Until after she loses the weight.”

  “Jesus Christ . . .”

  “Get a sense of humor to go with the fuckin’ merit badge, will ya, Emmet? Meanwhile, since I have no driver’s license, thanks to three DUIs, she drives me around. I pay her. This is evil?”

  “With what money?” Bobby asked, and now here came the Taurus, filling his side-view mirror, about a thousand feet behind him. “By the way, the tail is back.”

  “I told you, I’m a lawyer, not a shamus,” Gleason said. “I already got fifty large in advances from clients.”

  “Any of these clients legit?”

  “Christ, I hope not, or they won’t be steady customers. Meatball cases. Assault, gun rap, tax evasion, divorce—shit like that. Can’t be picky yet. In fact, I’ll need your help on a few. But we’ll talk about that later. And forget being tailed and my woman. Right now, we’re gonna use this drive home for you to tell me all about your girl . . . .”

  “Dorothea?”

  Bobby made a sudden swerve to the shoulder of the road. Gleason grabbed the dashboard as Bobby braked. The white Taurus accelerated and passed them doing eighty.

  “John David Francis . . .” Bobby said aloud.

  “You losing your marbles?” Gleason asked. “Talkin’ to the saints while you’re driving . . .”

  “JDF, those were the first three letters of the license plate,” Bobby said. “I’m out of practice, and he was moving too fast to get the whole plate. I’m gonna chase that bastard.”

  “Do that, and we’ll get pulled over,” Gleason said. “And you said you had people to see. Calm down. We don’t need attention.”

  Venus did not seem at all bothered by the commotion, just sat with her eyes closed, mouthing the new English words: “Boy, ball, bleach . . .”

  “You know how many white Tauruses there are in New York State?” Gleason asked Bobby. “How do you know it’s the same one?”

  “I know,” Bobby said and slid back onto the road.

  Gleason stuffed half an Almond Joy into his mouth.

  “How can you eat all that shit?” Bobby asked.

  “I’m a sweetheart and a lover, so I think of it as every day is Valentine’s Day,” Gleason said. “And it makes me fuck like an Easter bunny. I don’t know why I crave it. I just got a sweet gene. If I don’t eat candy, I start gnawing at the walls of my mouth until they bleed. I am trying to cut down, though. That’s why I started smoking again.”

  “You started smoking to cut down on your candy habit?” Bobby asked, incredulous.

  “It’s a toss between diabetes and emphysema,” Gleason said. “I’m trying to strike a balance. If I can get down to a dozen candy bars and two packs of smokes a day, I think I can find a safe middle ground, live to seventy.”

  “You ever see a doctor?”

  “I went through the whole tune-up, the full physical at the Strang Clinic, and they said I’m fit as a horse,” Gleason said.

  “I meant a shrink,” Bobby said.

  “Only as expert witnesses,” Gleason said.

  Bobby looked at him and blinked. Gleason fired another Almond Joy torpedo into his mouth. “Bon appétit, Izzy,” Bobby said. “But chew on this—I’m out an hour and already we’re being followed. I don’t like it.”

  “Get used to it,” Gleason said. “Gotta be a reporter . . . .”

  “How’d they know I was getting out?” Bobby asked, still not trusting Gleason.

  “The appeal moved through the courts! No atomic secret, chrissakes. Maybe it’s a fuckin’ DA’s tail, because Cis Tuzio is gonna come after you like she just grew kryptonite balls. Plus the same stooges who set you up before, they might try framing you again. For whacking someone else. This time they might just take you out, period. See, they didn’t whack you before because you were a cop. Killing a cop brings big heat. Framing you was better. But you’re not a cop anymore. If someone whacks you now, you’re just a dead ex-con, shit on the city’s shoes. Who gives a fiddler’s fuck? So you better carry a piece.”

  “You know I lost my carry license,” Bobby said.

  “This time around you’re gonna have to think like a cop,” Gleason said, “and act like a con.”

  “I have a checklist,” Bobby said. “I have to see Sandy Fraser, Dorothea’s friend and old roommate, and find out everything I don’t know about Dorothea. I hear she works for a guy named Lou Barnicle, who I think masterminded my frame. I want to know why she’s working for him and everything she knows about Dorothea. I want to see my old friend John Shine for some advice and to see what he’s heard on the tom-toms about my case and Lou Barnicle and Dorothea . . . .”

  “I know who Shine is,” Gleason said. “Good cop.”

  “I want to find the guy who found the body in the crematorium. He must know something. Moira Farrell never even subpoenaed him because she thought his testimony would be too gruesome for the jury. I want to pay her a visit, too. I gotta look up Tom Larkin, an old cop who was my father’s friend, because he knows how to get background information on people inside the NYPD better than anyone. And I’m gonna confront this Cis Tuzio face-to-face. I’m gonna find out why I was framed and why they’re trying to kill me. I’m—”

  “Hold on, Kemosabe,” Gleason said. “You’re going too fast for me. Pull Trigger here over at the next rest stop. We need gas, and I don’t think too good on an empty stomach.”

  8

  As Venus gassed up the Jeep, Bobby and Gleason ate burgers and fries at McDonald’s. Gleason probed Bobby for particulars about how he met Dorothea, their relationship, their plans, how he could not have known that her identity was a mystery. A secret. Or a lie.

  “I want details,” Gleason said. “If God didn’t like details so much, he wouldn’t have made so many of them. It’s how I choose my women and how I win my cases.”

  “I’ll give you details,” Bobby said, biting into a Big Mac and then taking a long drink of orange juice, thinking it had never tasted so good before. “I went over them every day for a year and a half.”

  “Details leading to the arrest first,” Gleason said, opening his Quarter Pounder, dumping half a bag of fries on top of the burger, and placing the bun back on top. His mouth opened wide and snapped down on the sandwich like a bear trap.

  Gleason said he also wanted Bobby to form a list of the people he thought he could count on back in the city. And, of course, a list of his enemies. A menu of white hats and black hats and the gray hats who could be used but not fully trusted. “When your life is on the line,” Gleason explained, “you can usually count all your true friends in the world by cupping your balls. But lucky people like you might have a few real friends. Most, as you already know from working the other side of the fence, are mutts. Ninety-nine percent of the human race is disappointing.”

  Bobby laughed. Nothing like becoming a jammed-up cop to teach you that. After he was arrested only three cops stayed in touch with him—John Shine, Tom Larkin, and his kid brother, Patrick. Everyone else avoided him as if he had a flesh-eating bacterium.

  “I met Dorothea a little less than two years ago, not long after the divorce,” Bobby said. “I was with Shine, who was my training officer when I got on the job. It was at a Christmas party for Brooklyn South Narcotics—where I used to work before going to the Manhattan DA’s squad. I had been working on an anonymous tip I received in the mail at the Manhattan DA’s office, about an extortion racket involving police medical pensions. The note said the racket was based in Brooklyn, but that some cops were actually paying to get their phony papers approved. I didn’t know if it was a crank or not, but I’d heard rumors of it before. So I thought it wouldn’t hurt to sniff around at the party, where people would be drinking, tongues wagging—holiday season.”

  “Biggest loudmouths in the world are cops with a few in ’em,” Gleason said.

  “That girl I told you about, Sandy Fraser, who worked at the police medical office, showed up at this party and brought Dorothea with her. The who
le place seemed to stop at once when Dorothea walked in. She looked out of place. Exotic. Held her head high, shoulders back, like someone who came out of a proud history, a heritage. Different than the relaxed, slouchy style of the women of Brooklyn, especially the policewomen . . .”

  “The Dunkin’ Donuts Dumper Department,” Gleason said. “I never met a policewoman that you couldn’t show Panavision movies on her ass after two years on the job.”

  “That’s a cliché,” said Bobby. “A lot of them are knockouts. But Dorothea would not have looked right in a police uniform. She didn’t even fit into the room, with her long-legged sophisticated walk, big dark eyes, a mane of thick, wavy black hair, full lips, a Sports Illustrated swimsuit body . . .”

  “I said details, not the whole wet dream,” Gleason said.

  “I’d just come out of the men’s room, where I heard these two ex-cops named Kuzak and Zeke, from a private-snoop firm called Gibraltar Security, talking about the police medical-pension fund. At the urinals, Kuzak and Zeke were asking a cop named O’Brien, who had about ten years on the job, what it would be worth to him to get out on an early disability pension. At first it sounded like idle piss-house banter. O’Brien laughed, said he’d pay a year’s salary to get a lifetime three-quarters pension. Then Kuzak mentioned a retired police captain named Lou Barnicle, who I always suspected was dirty—a greedy, brazen, mean, rat bastard. Zeke began checking stalls, and when they saw me, they dummied up fast. Kuzak, a big, tall, muscular guy, not exactly a genius, changes the conversation by saying, ‘So what about them Mets . . .’ It’s December and he’s asking about the Mets. The cop they were propositioning, O’Brien was his name—”

  “You said that already,” Gleason said. “Details, not reruns, I don’t forget anything. Ever. Except maybe broads’ names . . . .”

  “O’Brien was a guy I used to work with in Brooklyn South. He wasn’t going to write any dissertations on the missing link of evolution either. We were never pals, but maybe O’Brien knew I worked at the Manhattan DA’s office. That’s not considered as bad as Internal Affairs, but I’m not a cop’s kosher meal either. He saw me and bolted. Kuzak and Zeke just glared at me when I stepped out of the stall. I didn’t say a word, made believe I was preoccupied, disinterested.”