3 Quarters Read online

  Bobby had wasted no time, didn’t even call Maggie or Patrick to say he was home. No hugs, balloons, welcome-home parties. There was work to do. If he was going to stay out of the joint, he had to go get to the bottom of who framed him. Pronto.

  He knew that Sandy Fraser, Dorothea’s girlfriend, worked here at Gibraltar.

  He needed Sandy to fill in crucial missing blanks about Dorothea’s past. He also wanted to jostle the hornet’s nest of Gibraltar Security, to make them react, make mistakes.

  Bobby knew the area well, had been to a dozen barbecues and christenings out here, knew that a lot of cops, active and retired, lived in the more than ninety-percent white Gerritsen Beach, where some would sit around gin mills with neon shamrocks in the windows, overlooking Gerritsen Canal or the creek, lamenting about the slow encroachment of “them.” “Them” used to be just the “niggers,” but today it was “alla them”—immigrants, “Pakis,” “Chinks,” “dot heads,” “Rooskies,” “every kind of spic they make.” “These piss-colored people burn canary feathers, drink blood out of eggshells, and want to send their niglets to school with my kids,” Bobby remembered one forty-year-old retired cop saying, explaining why he was hammering a FOR SALE sign into his lawn with the handle of his service revolver. “Next stop, Windy Tip.”

  Windy Tip was a private, closed co-op community on the southern tip of Brooklyn, the last one hundred percent stronghold in the city of New York, where the truly terrified xenophobes took refuge with their backs to the sea. Even a New York Jew had to have the signatures of three prominent white Christian members of the Windy Tip co-op to be allowed to buy there. And the half-dozen Jews who did live there were married to shiksas, daughters of established Christian residents. Windy Tip was pure Pat Buchanan country, a simply breathtaking peninsula of bay and oceanfront property, just a few zip codes from Gerritsen Beach.

  Bobby folded a small piece of paper and jammed it into the doorbell so that it would ring continuously. Finally the door opened to reveal Zeke and Kuzak in expensive pastel-colored suits, which probably once fit them well but now barely closed over swelling guts. Zeke pulled the paper out of the doorbell.

  Both men had the strong, bulky frames of guys who used to pump iron and then went to suet when they gave up the gym for the oat bag. At the moment they also had the squinty, bloated, unrested look of an allnighter of booze, maybe a couple of grams of coke, a tag team of high-maintenance bimbos. Guys who lived like that went down like porridge, Bobby thought.

  “Ah, the lady-killer,” said Kuzak, the big guy, his hair so perfectly cut it looked like a toupee. “Fuck you doin’ out?”

  “Take me to your sleazeball,” Bobby said.

  “A comedian,” said Zeke, the blocky, shorter man, a strap of hair lashed across his bald dome. “Maybe you should go to open-mike night over Pip’s Comedy Club on the bay.”

  “If your moms is too busy bobbing for someone’s apples, I guess your boss will do,” Bobby said. He knew that in Brooklyn, especially a time warp like Gerritsen Beach, the best way to make someone lose his cool was to rank on his mother. It was an old and crude approach, but it rarely failed. “Ma” was still a holy word here, like in old gangster movies.

  “Say another word about my fuckin’ mother, I’ll cut your dick off,” said Zeke.

  “She that hungry?” Bobby said.

  Zeke moved for him, but Bobby used a trick he’d learned in the joint when the macho-sissies went after his behind. As Zeke reached toward him, Bobby stepped his way, bringing his work boot down on the man’s instep. Zeke howled and a series of spasms erupted in his body, sending him reeling to the side, banging against the doorframe and sliding down the marble wall into a lumpy wedge. Bobby bent toward Zeke and said, “Geez, so sorry, pal. Should I call Ma?”

  Kuzak made a two-handed grab at Bobby, who was bent over Zeke. But, as it had always worked in the joint, Bobby straightened at the count of three, coming up fast with the back of his skull, which accidentally on purpose caught Kuzak on the tip of his nose. Kuzak’s hands went to his nose, as if he were a Little Leaguer hit by a pop fly, and then he did a pirouette, stamping his feet, skidding on the marble floor, his legs crossing as he fell across Zeke’s ruined foot.

  With one eye on Kuzak, Bobby reached down and took the .38 Smith and Wesson from the ankle holster just above Zeke’s wounded foot. And with Kuzak’s back to him, Bobby groped under his suit jacket and removed an all hard-plastic Glock 9 mm. Bobby lifted it to his nose and sniffed. It smelled like a new car, weighed about two and a half pounds, and could stop a charging bull.

  Bobby discharged the thirteen-bullet clip from the Glock and emptied the bullets from the chamber of the .38 into his right palm. With his left hand he carried the guns by their trigger guards into Gibraltar Security.

  As Bobby passed through a second door, he broke the beam of an electric eye, triggering an alarm, a two-tone blare. Bobby immediately recognized a startled Sandy Fraser, who walked from behind her receptionist’s desk to shut off the alarm.

  “Jesus Christ, Bobby . . .”

  “Hello, Sandy,” Bobby said. “We need to talk. About Dorothea . . .”

  “She was my friend, Bobby,” Sandy whispered, glancing at the closed door to an inner office.

  “I didn’t kill her, Sandy,” Bobby said.

  “I believe you, but . . .” Sandy nodded at the door. “It’s a freakin’ mess. I’m scared. Not just for me. You should be, too.”

  “I need your help,” Bobby said.

  “You aren’t the only one,” Sandy said. “But I can’t get involved. I have good reasons, Bobby. I’m sorry . . . .”

  Sandy was still beautiful, with her dark fluffy hair, framing a face dominated by two very round blue eyes almost hidden by heavy mascara. She had soft, full lips with too much red lipstick.

  “You are involved,” Bobby said. Sandy walked back around her desk toward her chair. Bobby was aroused by the way her body moved inside the tight black dress. She took a nervous sip of coffee.

  “Please, Bobby, we can’t talk here,” Sandy said, still looking at the door to the inner office as the groans from Kuzak and Zeke came from the outside vestibule.

  “Fine,” Bobby said. “But soon. Today. I’ll find you.”

  Bobby dropped five bullets from Zeke’s gun into a heavy glass ashtray on Sandy’s desk. He picked up her steaming coffee cup, which was stenciled with her name and rimmed with fresh lipstick. Bobby winked at Sandy, and she half-smiled, then her wide mouth slashed into a thin line when two more Gibraltar goons in expensive summer suits appeared through the door from the inner office. A backup crew. Guys that still went to the gym, Bobby thought.

  “Geez, but the service here is great,” Bobby said. “After the first two executives literally fall over each other trying to help me, Gibraltar sends a couple of floor attendants to take care of me. Class.”

  Sandy stifled a laugh and turned away on her swivel chair from the confrontation, pulling open a file drawer behind her.

  The two goons looked from Zeke to Kuzak then back at Bobby. The youngest one, about twenty-eight, as cleanly barbered as a marine recruiting poster, began removing his jacket with slow precision.

  “My name is Flynn, and my associate here’s name is Levin,” Marine Poster said. “And you’re trespassing, Mr. Emmet.”

  “Son, in another situation—Last Chance Saloon, three in the morning, John Lennon doing ‘Imagine’ on the juke, three bikers walk in, jostle my date—I’d welcome you having my back,” Bobby said.

  He took a sip of the coffee. Sandy’s flavored lipstick greased his lip, the taste of a woman tantalizing his mouth. He dangled both pistols. “But I really think you’re a little inexperienced for this particular piece of customer service. Maybe you should call inside for a supervisor, huh? Someone a little higher up on the evolutionary scale?”

  “I warned you politely,” Flynn said. “And you make with the mouth. For that, I’m going to have to snap your fucking spine like a number-two pen
cil, scumbag.”

  Bobby turned to Sandy, said, “He pronounces his ‘i-n-gs,’ and he can count to two? Precocious. But he needs manners, cursing in front of a lady like that shows that he was dragged up.”

  Kuzak stumbled into the room from the vestibule now, a bloody hankie to his nose. Bobby put the coffee cup down.

  “I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you,” Kuzak said, weakly.

  Flynn put a hand up to stop Kuzak. He signaled for Levin, his redheaded partner-in-dumbbells, to flank Bobby from the left side.

  Bobby nonchalantly transferred Zeke’s .38 to his right hand, sat on the edge of Sandy’s desk, and pointed it at them. He stifled a yawn. Flynn looked at the ashtray on Sandy’s desk, where the bullets lay amid the dead Carltons.

  “Okay, class, let’s play count the bullets in the ashtray,” Bobby said as Flynn and his partner hesitated. “I count five. That means there’s still one in the chamber. Let’s see which brave boy wants to count to number six first.”

  Bobby spun the cylinder, amusing himself with this game of threatened Russian roulette. “Moving on to advanced math, let’s see, you two guys can’t be more than twenty-eight years old. Tops thirty. Both wearing NYPD rings. But if you work here and also double-date at the gym, it must mean you guys are retired from the job. Medical-disability pensions, I bet.”

  He spun the cylinder again, took another sip of the coffee, and said, “Then you work here, probably off the books, job classification—Prime USDA Beef. Plus, you almost certainly got your papers in for Social Security Insurance, another couple a grand a month. You guys must be good for what . . . six, maybe even seven or eight grand a month. For life, no tax. For two guys who can’t count to six? Not bad. New math for a new century.”

  “Let’s play how many face bones of yours I can break with one punch,” Flynn said.

  “Let’s play nice and put your guns on the desktop first,” said Bobby, waving his gun from one to the other. Sandy sat silently, her hands in front of her on the desk, her nails clicking nervously on the glass top.

  “Come on, I only have one bullet,” Bobby said. “Who’s gonna be the hero that takes it?”

  Flynn and Levin reluctantly took out their 9 mm Glocks from back belt holsters and put them on Sandy’s desk. Bobby disengaged the clips from each one and dropped the guns into a fish tank that graced the reception area, causing a panic among the ravenous piranha. Someone should get a photograph of a school of piranha trying to eat a Glock nine, Bobby thought. Dorothea would have seen it as a microcosmic image of New York City and set up a camera. Bobby also dropped Kuzak’s gun into the tank but still held onto Zeke’s .38.

  The door to the inner office opened, and Lou Barnicle stepped out, wearing Ray-Ban tints, a gold Rolex, and an Armani suit, looking more like a polished machine politician than a retired cop. He smiled, showing off a big row of capped white teeth that perfectly set off his deep tan. The skin on his face was as free of wrinkles as a snare drum, and Bobby was sure he’d had a touch-up job around the eyes and a chin tuck. Good job, too, keeping his age on cruise control, somewhere between forty-five and fifty. His blue pinstripe was a perfect fit, with the beige crewneck silk polo shirt underneath making him look stocky, powerful, a man of stature without a trace of the old police fat. His feet were too wide for the oxblood loafers, but he wore them anyway, probably for the cute little gold bars that told you they were some expensive Italian brand.

  “So, what seems to be the problem here, gentlemen?” Barnicle asked, spreading open his arms like a priest giving a blessing.

  “Hello, Barnicle,” Bobby said with a smirk. “I see you’re still spending two hundred bucks a week in the barbershop.”

  Barnicle had always been the best-shaved cop he’d ever known; no other cop paid to have his face shaved every morning. At the Manhattan DA’s office, Bobby had requested the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau file on Barnicle, and they had a whole section just on his shaving and grooming expenses. And another subsection on his extravagant sartorial spending. When he was on the job, on a captain’s pay of under a hundred grand, he had also managed to buy a half-million-dollar, six-bedroom bay-front house in Windy Tip, drive a fortythousand-dollar BMW, keep a three-hundred-and-fiftythousand-dollar, forty-five-foot cabin cruiser, and spend at least a month of every winter in the Caribbean. Though they could never prove it, IAB knew he was too clean to be anything but dirty.

  “Guns?” Barnicle said rhetorically as he took small confident steps through his outer office, shaking his head as he looked at his men.

  “How’re the war wounds there, Lou?” Bobby asked. “Looks like a truly anguished retirement.”

  Barnicle was retired now, another three-quarters disability pension. His private-snoop firm hired nothing but other retired cops, most of them probably on medical pensions. It was all legal. On the close-shaved face of it. But something more than a few scam artists beating the city for pensions was going on here, Bobby thought. Or else they would never have framed him for sniffing around. That’s if he was looking in the right place . . . .

  “Fellas, guns and violence?” Barnicle said like an uncle settling a family feud. “We need this for Bobby Emmet? I worked with Bobby, on the job, through tough times, when cops were cops. We don’t pull guns on our own. We should be celebrating his release.”

  Barnicle looked at the bloodied Kuzak helping the hobbling Zeke to a chair as Flynn and Levin stood staring at their guns in the fish tank. Barnicle shook his head like a disappointed teacher, but under the veneer, in the cold cobalt eyes, Bobby could see the anger rising like a chronic bile.

  “Geez, I heard the welcome-home party was here,” Bobby said. “Am I late? Cake all gone?”

  “Bobby,” Barnicle said, “come inside; we’ll talk . . . Sandy? Make some espresso . . . .” He turned to the four men. “There’s a backlog of fieldwork. Do it. Plus we need to get five more Gibraltar uniformed guys for the rap concert in Brooklyn College tonight. It’s sold out. Maybe oversold. Could be a ruckus. Eight bucks an hour. No OT.”

  Lou Barnicle held the door to the inner office open, and Bobby placed Sandy’s cup back on her desktop. Their eyes met ever so briefly, and then she picked up a ringing phone. Bobby followed Barnicle into his office, still holding on to the .38.

  Bobby looked around the oak paneled inner office. There were no windows. He heard the whir of an exhaust fan, sucking out the first smoke from a Havana cigar that Barnicle was now lighting.

  “Where you’ve been, Bobby,” Barnicle said, “I guess you’d like a scotch, a vodka . . .”

  “No thanks, Lou. Last time I had a drink with someone from this rat’s nest, I wound up convicted of murder.”

  Barnicle feigned offense.

  “You’re not suggesting I had . . .”

  “There was more natural light in my cell than there is in here,” Bobby said. “But this is good prep for you, Lou. Like astronaut training. If you can spend eight hours a day in this box, you might be able to handle solitary. Cops like us get twenty-three-hour-a-day lock-down. No hot-towel shaves. No personal tailors. Even the diamond-studded Rolex doesn’t improve time when you’re doing it, Lou.”

  “You’re bitter,” Barnicle said evenly. “You have to learn to forgive and forget.”

  Bobby paced the room, looked at some of the plaques Barnicle had won as a police captain over the years: the Emerald Society, B’nai B’rith, Knights of Columbus.

  “Yeah, well, I have Irish Alzheimer’s,” Bobby said, tapping his temple with his left forefinger. “I forget everything but the fucking grudge.”

  “You’re a courageous man,” Barnicle said. “No one can ever say that Bobby Emmet has no balls. Or brains. Too smart to be a cop, I always thought. But you’re also reckless. You overstep your bounds. You step on other people’s toes. You took a job where you even went after your own kind. What the fuck is that? I mean, IAB tries to run guys out of the department. But you, you tried to put cops in the joint. As you found out, that’s not a nice place to be fo
r a cop. And now here you are, as soon as you get out, making waves with me. For what?”

  “I think you had me framed,” Bobby said. “No use beating around the bush. I think you set me up, and like most red-blooded Americans, I believe in revenge.”

  “You got no backup, no carry license, no friends, and I’m supposed to gulp Maalox for the puny agita you wanna give me?” Barnicle produced a manufactured belch. “There, that’s all the gas you give me. You’re a burp in the hurricane of my life.”

  Bobby took a deep breath.

  “I’m going to find out what happened to Dorothea Dubrow,” Bobby said. “Bet on it.”

  “Hey, I might be a lot of things,” Barnicle said. “But I don’t go around killing girls. Especially beautiful ones . . . .”

  “Jesus, that is aesthetically discriminating of you,” Bobby said.

  “I run a legit shop here,” Barnicle continued, as if Bobby had not even interrupted. “I take care of guys retired from the job. Even you. That’s right.” He smiled his toothy smile. “I can offer you twenty-five dollars an hour to start, bodyguarding a few rap stars right now. What do you say?”

  “I’m sure you’d like that, having me check IDs and ticket stubs at Brooklyn College,” Bobby said. “Better to have me inside the tent pissing out instead of vice versa. But if you didn’t help kill her, what makes you so certain Dorothea’s even dead?”

  “If she’s alive,” Barnicle said, “why doesn’t she come forward?” He stood up, poured a snifter of Rémy Martin cognac, swirled it, sniffed it. “She reads the papers. She knows what happened to you.”

  “Maybe she’s being held against her will,” Bobby said.

  “Where, in a zoo? Come to think of it, she did have an ass like a jungle beast . . . no offense.”

  Bobby felt a flare ignite in his head, a fuse of white-hot rage. Control, he thought. Control. “Offense taken,” Bobby said. “And duly noted.”

  A knock came on the door.

  “Come in, babe,” Barnicle said, still swirling the cognac in the snifter.

  Bobby gripped the .38 by the handle again, behind his back. Sandy carried in a tray with two cups of espresso. Bobby loosened his grip on the gun and palmed it again. He fell silent as Sandy tore open an envelope of Equal and poured it into Barnicle’s demitasse cup. As if performing a ritual, she stirred it with a tiny silver spoon, twisted a lemon rind, and skimmed the rim of the ceramic cup with it.