to the Six-O. Ray Sr. and me might not have known each other as cops, but we made up for lost time and got real well acquainted back in the late ’80s.
I strolled across the street to talk to the tanned, shirtless man kneeling to adjust an in-ground sprinkler head on his front lawn.
“You Ray Jr.?” I asked.
“Why? Who wants to know?”
“No fair. You asked two questions. I only asked one.”
He stopped what he was doing, gazed up at me, and got to his feet. Whereas Ray Martello Sr. had been a small, compact man, this guy was eye to eye with me. He was square-shouldered and ripped. He did the cop thing of getting in close to me-his nose nearly touching mine-and staring through me. He was checking me out and trying to intimidate me all at once. A sly, arrogant smile worked its way onto his face. I figured him for Martello’s kid. Had to be. Had the father’s looks and the same impudent style. I was feeling guilty about trying to get a rise out of him until I saw that fucking smile.
I noticed some rather intricate and unusually colored tattoos on his forearms, biceps, and delts. There were a series of Chinese characters on his left forearm done in bright red, not the usual dull blue. Both biceps were encircled by bands of blue-green barbed wire highlighted with that same bright red, but the tat that caught my attention was on his right delt. It was the head of a Peregrine falcon done in vibrant shades of black, dark and light brown, off-white, and hints of blue. The yellow around the beak and eyes was so real, I could almost imagine pricking my finger on the tip of its hooked bill. I shifted position slightly and observed that the falcon’s body and talons continued down his back. Here the work was even more skillfully executed, as the dappling on the bird’s belly, the texture of its feathers and the blending of shades was like nothing I’d ever seen. Well… that wasn’t true. I had recently seen something very much like it.
“Cop?” he asked, confident of my answer.
“Used to be. In the city. Nice ink work. Where’d you get it done?”
“Thanks.” He pointed to his forearm, then his bicep. “These here I got in A.C.”
“How about the bird? You get that done in Atlantic City too?”
“What are you, some kinda queer or something?”
“Or something,” I said. “I knew your dad a little.”
That wiped the arrogant smirk off his face and put a dent in his smart guy attitude. A city cop my age would know about what a corrupt piece of shit his father had been. In 1972, Raymond Sr., along with Larry McDonald and another thuggish cop I knew named Kenny Burton, had tortured and murdered drug kingpin Dexter “D Rex” Mayweather. Mayweather was king of the Soul Patch, the African-American section of Coney Island. But his execution wasn’t some noble act of misguided vigilantism done to rid the Coney Island streets of drugs. Rather it was done at the behest of Anello Family capo Frankie Motta in order to cover up an ill-conceived partnership between his crew and D Rex.
“Yeah, so you knew my pops, so what?”
“I was in Frankie Motta’s house the night he got shot.”
Martello Jr. blanched, then burned hot. His face did somersaults. It was as if a colony of beetles were under his skin, pulling his face this way and that. He knew who I was without asking.
“You got some set of balls showing up here, Prager.”
“You think?”
“I do. In fact, I think if you don’t get off my property pretty soon, I’m gonna have to shoot you for trespassing.”
“Your father tried to shoot me once and look where that got him.”
May weather’s murder remained unsolved until, seventeen years later, a low level dealer named Malik Jabbar was arrested by a very young and very ambitious detective named Carmella Melendez. During his interrogation, Jabbar claimed to know who had killed D Rex. That was all it took for things to unravel. Within weeks, Larry McDonald committed suicide, Malik Jabbar and his girlfriend were executed, and Carmella’s partner and another 60th Precinct cop, a Detective Bento, were gunned down in a Brooklyn bar.
When I figured it out, I went to confront the terminally ill Frankie Motta. While I was there, Ray Martello and Kenny Burton showed up intending to do to Motta and me what they had done to D Rex. Things didn’t work out quite the way they hoped. When the gunsmoke cleared, there were two men dead, one wounded, and one, me, still upright. Martello survived his wounds, but his heart crapped out on him on the operating table. He remained in a coma for a long time before they pulled the plug on him. The family might have better dealt with the tragedy and disgrace if, in the aftermath, the Brooklyn and Queens DAs hadn’t held a televised press conference during which they made Martello the heavy in their little dog and pony show.
“Yeah, but I won’t miss from this range,” he said. “You’d look good bleeding from the eyes.”
“Your dad thought the same thing.”
“Smart man, my pops.”
“That’s not the words that come to mind when I think about your dad. Corrupt assassin is more like it.”
The red of his face deepened and he coiled as if getting ready to strike. He didn’t. Instead he shook his head at me.
“You want me to smack you,” he said. “Well, fuck you, Prager. You’ll get yours soon enough and you won’t see it coming.”
“You willing to risk everything on that?” I goaded him.
“To get rid of you, it’d be worth it. Any price to make you feel what we went through would be worth paying.”
“Glad to hear you say it.” I smiled.
“You’re a sick fuck, Prager. Now I’m not going to warn you again. Hit the road, asshole.”
“Don’t worry, I’m going.”
I left. There was nothing more to be gained by my further antagonizing him. I had a good feeling about Martello. He was the best-looking suspect I’d stumbled across. Ray Jr. knew good tattoo work. One look at that falcon on his back told me as much and I wasn’t discouraged just because Martello didn’t fit the description of the older man who had arranged for the kid’s ink work. Whoever was doing this thing wasn’t doing it alone. Maybe Cyclops was a relative or an old cop friend of the family’s. Suffolk cops are the best paid in the country, so he had the means. Martello had just made it crystal clear he had the motive. And, as I was about to discover, Ray Jr. had something else that got my attention. I drove up the block a little ways to find a spot to turn around. Coming back past the Martello house, I looked down his driveway and saw that one of his garage doors was open. Parked in the garage was a new pewter Yukon.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I aged a few years on the ride into Brooklyn, but no one sang “Happy Birthday” to me when I called into the office. At least everyone was now up to speed and, for the first time since this whole affair began, we were working the case like a case should be worked. Carmella gave Brian Doyle the shit end of the stick. His job was, for the time being, to be Martello’s round the clock shadow. We’d get him some help as soon as we could. Not because we felt sorry for his ass, but because twenty-four hour surveillance is hard enough to do with a full team. It’s nearly impossible for one person to maintain. The need for food and bathroom breaks gives the mark too many opportunities to slip away. And doing surveillance in the ’burbs is more difficult than in the city. Blending in isn’t easy. Neighbors notice strange cars and unfamiliar faces.
Carmella said she would make calls to some friends in the Suffolk PD and the Suffolk County DA’s office to check on Martello. Devo was getting credit reports and any other financial documents he could lay his hands on. When I walked into the office, both of them had promising news for me.
“I like him for it,” Carmella said. “A captain I know out there says Martello’s a prick.”
“Brian Doyle’s a prick too, but we hired him and he’s not haunting my wife.”
“There’s more. This captain says-”
“This captain, how do you guys know each other?”
