temple. “I got a plan.”
“You’ll miss the job, Joe. You just won’t admit it.”
“Yeah, I guess. But it sure has changed. Twenty-seven years ago, you told me I’d have a black female partner in the Six-Two, I’da told you, ‘no way.’ And here we are.”
“Not to mention a
“Oh, we always had gays, Cil,” Rizzo replied. “Not open, maybe, but we always had them. Women
Priscilla nodded. “Damn right,” she said.
“But the job’s changed in bad ways, too. It used to be like a family. One big family. Now… well, maybe we got a few too many half-retarded cousins wanderin’ around at the holiday meals. You know what I mean?”
Priscilla reached out and patted his shoulder. “Yeah, Grandpa. The good old days. I got it. Now let’s go sign in. And I’m feeling a little hungry. Do detectives start the day tour with breakfast, or is that just uniforms?”
“Cil, we start
RIZZO SIPPED at his coffee, rereading the blurry copy of the precinct fax he held. The two detectives were seated at a rear booth of Rizzo’s favorite diner awaiting their meals.
“Son-of-a-fuckin’-bitch,” he mumbled.
Priscilla looked at him over the rim of her mug. “Damn, Joe, readin’ it over and over ain’t going to change what it says.”
Rizzo compressed his lips. The fax had come from Personnel Headquarters at Police Plaza, addressed to all members of the force and distributed to all precincts in the city. The police recruitment civil ser vice exam scheduled for early November would result in expedited hiring. Due to an unusually large number of impending retirements, anyone successfully completing the exam could reasonably expect to be hired within six to nine months as opposed to the usual fifteen- to twenty-four-month window.
“This is exactly what I didn’t need,” Rizzo said. “My youngest daughter is taking this friggin’ test. In six months, she’ll have enough college credits to get appointed. I was figurin’ on a hell of a lot more time to talk her out of it. This jams me up real good. My wife is gonna freak on this.”
They sat silently as the waitress delivered their meals. When she left, Priscilla spoke.
“Don’t you have three girls?” she asked.
Rizzo nodded. “Yeah, Carol’s the baby. She’s almost twenty, a sophomore at Stony Brook. Marie is my oldest, she’s twenty-four. She’s in med school upstate. Jessica is twenty-one. She graduates from Hunter College in June.”
Priscilla buttered her toast and winced. “What a tuition nut to crack,” she said.
“I can’t even dent it, let alone crack it. Everybody is borrowed to the balls.”
“Well,” Priscilla said, “you gotta figure one of them for the job, Joe. They’re all a cop’s kid.”
Rizzo shook his head. “Bullshit. I told you, the job’s changed too much. For the worse. These kids, all starry- eyed, gonna save the world. Ends bad for most of them. You know that.”
She shrugged. “It is what it is,” she said. “You make it work for you if you got the balls.”
Rizzo leaned forward and spoke softly. “Let’s just drop it, okay? This ain’t your problem.”
Priscilla smiled. “What ever you say, boss. My lips are sealed.”
They made small talk as they ate, discussing their individual relationships with Mike McQueen, who had partnered with both of them at different times, and what Priscilla might expect in Brooklyn.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Rizzo said with a smile, “this ain’t exactly that Upper East Side silk stocking house where you worked uniform.”
“I noticed that as soon as I pulled my bike offa the Belt Parkway and hit the streets. Now,” she continued, taking a last sip of coffee and patting her lips dry with a paper napkin, “let’s go do what we’re supposed to be doin’: cruising the precinct, getting the lay of the land. I’m anxious to start raisin’ those stats of yours, Mr. Legend.”
Priscilla stood, stretching out her back muscles. “Let’s go,” she said again.
They left the diner, pausing outside for Rizzo to have a quick cigarette. Priscilla had made it clear: no smoking in the car.
“I don’t want you stinkin’ me up with that crap you smoke,” she told Rizzo.
Rizzo had her take the wheel. As she started the Impala, he reached under the front seat, pulling out a bottle of green mint Listerine. Priscilla watched as he raised the bottle to his lips, swishing the liquid around in his mouth, then opening the door slightly and spitting into the gutter. When he was done, he replaced the bottle, then shifted in his seat and pulled on his shoulder harness. Feeling Priscilla’s eyes on him, Rizzo turned to face her. Seeing her expression, he frowned.
“What?” he asked.
“What? You asking
He shook his head. “No. Jen thinks I quit. If I gargle after every couple a smokes, my breath won’t smell when I get home to night. That’s all.”
Priscilla shook her head and glanced into the mirrors, easing the car from the curb. “Damn, Joe. Cops ridin’ this car next shift find that bottle under the seat, they’re gonna figure I’m givin’ up some head for that shield you got me. Don’t leave that shit there. Please.”
He chuckled. “It’s been awhile since I worked with a dame,” he answered with a smile. “I forgot how all of you think.”
“Besides,” Priscilla said, “Jen isn’t stupid. You come home all minty-breath, your clothes smelling like horse shit, she probably knows exactly what’s going on.”
“You could be right,” he said with a shrug.
They spent the next two hours cruising the varied areas of the Sixty-second Precinct, from the bustling, thriving commercial strips of Eighteenth and Thirteenth Avenues, Eighty-sixth Street and Bay Parkway, to the nestled residential blocks, tree-lined and glistening under the October sunshine. Rizzo pointed out the trouble-spot bars and social clubs, the after-hours mob joints and the junkie haunts. Beneath the elevated tracks on New Utrecht Avenue, he pointed to a grimy, antiquated storefront, its plate-glass windows opaque with green paint.
“The Blackball Poolroom,” he said. “It’s nineteen fifty-eight inside there, Cil. Totally.”
He showed her sprawling Dyker Park, with its adjacent golf course, and pointed out the bocce, basketball, and tennis courts. There multiple generations of neighborhood residents played their distinct games with equal intensity. As they cruised slowly along Nineteenth Avenue on their way back to the precinct, Priscilla slowed the car for a red light. Rizzo reached across and lightly touched her arm. When she turned to face him, he pointed diagonally across the intersection.
“Take a good look at that guy and remember him. The tall kid wearing the Giants cap and black coat. That there’s Joey DeMarco, seventeen years old, future serial killer. About once or twice a year the house gets a call. This guy lures stray cats with food. Then he douses ’em with lighter fluid and sets them on fire. They run like hell, squealing like banshees. Usually they die in midstride. Time the uniforms get there, the thing is stiff and charred like charcoal. God only knows how many times he’s done it and never got caught. He’s a real sadistic little prick. So far he hasn’t grabbed some kid or old lady to kill, but mark my words, it’s coming.”
Priscilla glanced up as the light turned green, and she eased the car forward.
“Why’s he still out free, roamin’ with the citizens?” she asked.
Rizzo shrugged. “Why you think? Every time they lock him up, he gets psyched over to Kings County Hospital G Building. The geniuses over there drug him and squeeze Medicaid, or insurance or what ever, dry for thirty days. Then they pronounce him
Priscilla studied DeMarco as they drove past him. “Duly noted,” she said.
Rizzo fumbled through his jacket pocket and produced a packet of Nicorette. “See, that’s what I mean,” he said as he began to wrestle with the packaging. “How the job’s changed. Years ago, a kid like that, if he torched a cat, a sector car would grab him and break his fuckin’ arm. After that, he’d either knock it off or go do it somewheres out of the precinct. But not anymore. Those days are gone.”
Priscilla smiled. “There
