We went there a lot. It was only a couple blocks away and they could drink cheap. Feed me cheap. We were walking home from there. Stopped at a deli to get some milk and cereal for breakfast. We got oranges too. For my mother. She loved fruit. I can still see 'em. After he dropped the bag and it broke, the milk spilled onto the sidewalk and the oranges were so bright against it. So orange. Like a still-life in my head that won't ever fade.'
'Some things ...' Annie said. 'They never go away.' Then she smiled. 'Cal's was closed by the time I got to the Ninth, but they still talk about it.'
'Yeah. The bar legends are made of.'
'So your uncle and your pops, they just drank and hung out?'
'Pretty much. They'd talk to other cops, some of my uncle's friends. I think some of the cops resented havin' a kid in the bar but they got used to me. We were there a helluva lot. They played cards sometimes, arm wrestled when they were really loaded. That's how I knew they were in the bag. One would challenge and the other'd accept. But mostly they talked and drank. Why? What are you thinkin'?'
'Nothin'. Just gettin' a feel for who he'd know there.'
'Cops.' Frank shrugged. 'It was a cop bar.'
'Yeah, okay. Anything today?'
Lots, Frank thought, but answered, 'Nah. Quiet. Could you leave Charlie Mercer's number for me? I want to call him tomorrow, see if I can hire him next week. Unless we get a hit by Sunday I'm going home Monday.'
'Yeah, okay, I'll leave it for you. He's a good man, Charlie. You could leave your surveillance in worse hands.'
'I'm takin' your word on that. How was your day?'
Annie flicked a shoulder. 'Nine months, two weeks and
'You hate it that much?'
'I don't hate the Job. I'm just tired, is all. So much crap, and most of it internal. Like we don't get enough on the street, the captain comes in this morning all bright-eyed and well-rested, waving a memo. Says he gonna dock us fifteen minutes every time he sees us with our feet up on the desk. Says it's unprofessional. Doesn't look good to citizens. So you know what our loo ordered us to do?' Annie laughed. 'He
'Christ,' Frank replied. 'Like it was yesterday. My training officer was an asshole deluxe. He was about to rape this pregnant girl in an alley, invited me to watch or leave. I didn't do either. Took out my night stick and swung at him. Didn't warn him or anything, just swung with all I had. He went down but he got up pissed. We sparred around that alley for what seemed like hours. We were both tired. His shoulder wasn't working too well where I'd hit him and he was swingin' his stick at me with his left. We got a radio call and he had to grab the portable with his left hand. When he switched his stick from his left to his right that's when I knew I had him. I walked back to the unit and got in. He came a minute later and we responded to the call like nothing had happened. He talked shit behind my back until he got transferred to a cushy assignment in a white-collar division but I never had trouble with him again. Stupid how much time you have to waste defendin' yourself against people who're supposed to be on your side.'
'You said it, sister.' Looking at the ice cream, Annie wondered, 'You got anymore of that?'
'Whole other pint in the freezer.'
Annie shook a finger at Frank, calling as she left, 'You're evil, cookie. Pure evil.'
She came back, eating out of the carton like Frank, saying, 'Let me tell you 'bout my first day. I was workin' the Twenty-Third, up to Harlem. We get this call. Domestic disturbance, right? Could be anythin'. We get to this fallin' down tenement, climb twelve flights 'cuz the elevator's broke and besides, my partner says, elevators are like roach motels for the police—cops go in but they don't come out. We get up there and there's all this commotion in the hallway. Neighbors say the woman's ex-boyfriend's in the apartment cuttin' on their three kids. He found out she had a new boyfriend and he's gonna kill the kids before he lets another man raise 'em. We knock and the guy won't open. The girlfriend's screamin' inside that he's killin' the babies and the spooky thing is, the kids aren't crying, so we call emergency services. But meanwhile the woman stops screamin'. My partner's tryin' to talk the guy into opening the door but for nothin'. Damn it.'
She looked for the ice cream she'd dripped onto the floor. Frank wadded up the paper towel from around her own carton and called, 'Catch.'
Annie grabbed it, mopping up the spill. 'Thanks. So here comes EMS runnin' up the stairs and they ram the door in. My partner and me we charge in behind 'em. I never seen such a mess. I'm just standin' there in shock. There's blood everywhere. On the ceiling, the floor, the walls, the furniture. It's like someone's almost finished painting the place red. The boyfriend, he's red too, just rockin' on the couch next to the woman. Her throat's slit to her neckbone. EMS cuffs the guy and my partner gives me a poke. I follow him into the bedrooms. We find the kids back there, all three of 'em, their throats cut. We go back to the living room just as this itty-bitty old lady charges through the busted door, screamin' 'Sweet Jesus Almighty.' I'm thinkin' oh shit, it's the kids' grandma or somethin'. I'm thinking how the hell am I gonna calm her down, get her outta here, right? Then she turns and looks me square in the eye, this sweet little old lady, and she demands, 'Who's gonna pay to clean up this fuckin' mess?' I shoulda known right then what I was gettin' into, huh?'
Frank grinned. 'Do you regret it?'
Annie considered her spoon. 'I wish'd I'd had more time with the kids. I was selfish, I guess. Back then I wouldna given this up for nothin'. I loved it. Never knowin' what you were gonna get into that day, who you were gonna meet. . . but my kids paid the price. I missed a lotta things. Things they still remind me of to this day. My mother, too.'
Frank chewed an almond. 'Hypothetical question. What if you'd walked out on your husband and left him with the kids? He was a cop too, right? And let's say he raised the kids as well as you did. What would your mother say about him?'
'I don't know.'
'Guess.'
'She'd probably say he was a saint like my cousin Henry. His wife run off with a car salesman—after she stuck him for thirty large for a new Buick—and he's raisin' his baby daughter, goin' to school nights and workin' in a bank.'
'He's a saint, right?'
'Yeah. He can walk on watuh.'
'So your husband walks out on you, leaves you with two kids, and you manage to raise them and hold down a good job at the same time. Your cousin does that with one kid and he's a saint, but you do that with two and you're selfish? What am I not seeing?'
'What you're not seein', cookie, is a long line of Italian mothers who sacrifice for their kids. I shoulda found a nice man, remarried and settled down. Quit all that crazy police business. This may be the twenty-first century but my mother's still living in the nineteenth. Nah. The way she sees it, I'm selfish.'
'Then if that's the way you see it, you got a foot in the nineteenth century, too.'
'So? What's wrong with that?'
'What's wrong with that is you're a saint, too. You're not selfish. You raised two kids all by yourself, doing a man's work, and you should be givin' yourself a pat on the back, not a kick in the ass.'
Annie gave Frank a hard stare. 'You don't know the whole story, cookie. It was selfish. Thanks for the ice cream.'
Swinging the door closed, Annie left Frank puzzling what the whole story could be.
CHAPTER 32
Annie had become Frank's alarm clock. A light sleeper, Frank got up when she heard her puttering around the apartment.
'Hey.'
'Mornin'. Ya sleep good?'
'Like a baby. You?'
'I had better nights. Shouldna eaten all that ice cream. I'm gonna have to spend an extra hour in the pool today.'
