“Just help us out. If you hear anything we should know about, you tell us, that’s all. If there’s gonna be a raid, we need to know that. If there’s a bug somewhere, obviously we need to know that. You’re a cop, you hear things.”
“I don’t hear much. You’re gonna be disappointed.”
“There’s other things you can do. Errands. We got a lot of work. You’re a big guy; we’ll find jobs for you.”
Joe bowed his head.
“Relax. It’s not so bad. Alls I’m asking is just help out a little, pitch in. It’s the least you can do. I mean that.”
33
With a machinelike shuffle, Fish counted tens and twenties from a roll. At one hundred dollars, he would shift the pile to one side, moisten the pad of his thumb with his tongue, and riffle out another. His dexterity was surprising. Fish looked old and gristly. The skin on his hands was spotted parchment. His fingernails were overgrown to the point of dangerousness. But there was something magical in the way those hands spun out bills into ten neat piles, recombined them, and handed the stack to Joe Daley.
“Thank you.”
“Hope your new boss chokes on it. That’s between you and me.” Fish watched the money disappear into Joe’s pants pocket and made a sour little frown. “Make sure it gets where it’s going.”
“How about I do my job, you do yours?”
“I’m just sayin’. Remember whose money that is in your pocket.”
“Pretty strange, huh? You putting money in my pocket for a change.”
“I seen stranger.”
“Well, it’s strange to me.”
“You’ll get used to it. You’re a natural.”
“Hey, what are you always breaking my balls? What’d I ever-?”
“You just took my hard-earned money. You want I should thank you?”
“Come on, Fish, this is just business. I don’t like it any more than you do.”
“You like it fine.”
“Oh, you know this.”
“I got eyes, I can see.”
“Well, you’re wrong.”
“I been doing this a long time,” Fish shrugged, “but…” Whatever you say.
“Anyways, this isn’t about me. If it wasn’t me sitting here, it’d be somebody else.”
“But it is you sitting here. That’s the point.”
“That’s right, it’s me sitting here, so how about you just treat me like a professional and we’ll get this over with. Unbelievable. Like I don’t have enough on my mind without this shit from you. Jesus, as if I haven’t given you enough money all these years. That doesn’t count for nothing?”
“You think I keep all that? I don’t keep it. You people bet against each other-the losers pay the winners. That’s the way it works. I’m just the matchmaker. You want to know where your money went, go find somebody who won that day. I don’t have it. Alls I keep is the juice. It’s nothing, crumbs.”
“Charlie Capobianco does okay with crumbs.”
“Volume.”
“Well, anyways, you took a lot of crumbs off of me.”
“So now you get to take some back. Funny, huh, Detective?”
“I said, that’s enough with that, Fish. I didn’t tell you to go get in this business.”
“I was going to say the same thing to you.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t have a whole lot of choice.”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
“There’s things you don’t know, Fish.”
“You’d be surprised. Hey, you are what you are, is all I’m saying. Your father must be spinning in his grave.”
“Watch your fuckin’ mouth.” Joe reached across the table and tamped his finger against Fish’s chest as if he were pushing a stubborn button there. “I’m not gonna tell you again. It’s enough with that. Am I going to have to hear this crap every week?”
“No. Guess I said my piece.”
34
Seagulls had nested on the roof of Station One. They came and went from the yellow-brick parapet, landed, squawked, fretted, flew off again. Three dun, speckled eggs lay unprotected in a nest of twigs. A fat furry chick bumbled around the edge of the roof, following the high yellow-brick wall. It was the same speckled gray-brown color as the eggs. The chick paused here and there to inspect bits of garbage collected in the stones that covered the rooftop, cigarette butts, beer cans, Christmas lights. When the chick reached an enormous pair of black shoes, it tried to hop up toward the laces.
“Beat it,” Joe Daley said.
He shifted his feet and the little bird waddled off. Joe returned his attention to the view from the parapet, rooftops bristling with antennae, Beacon Hill and the waste field of the West End at dusk. Below, cars emerged from the Sumner Tunnel and disappeared again into the city.
A voice behind him: “Jesus, Joe. What, are you hiding up here?” Brendan Conroy negotiated the roof door, the raised threshold, the steel bar that propped the door open. He was awkward in the top-heavy way that big old men are. To Joe he looked like a moose crossing a stream, from stone to stone. “I’ve been all over this fucking place looking for you. Three flights of stairs, pshh. The hell are you doing up here?”
Joe removed a cigarette from his lips and showed it.
“Ah. Why didn’t you tell the lieutenant? What if they needed to find you?”
“I’m off.”
“Go home, then. You’ve got a family, young fella.”
“What’s on your mind, Brendan? You must have climbed those stairs for a reason.”
Conroy came over. He was not tall enough to look out over the parapet, so he scanned the rooftop. Three chimney stacks, an air shaft, those filthy goddamn birds screeching and flapping. The one finished feature was a cupola complete with Palladian windows, gold dome, and pineapple finial. Conroy was in full uniform, gold chevrons on his arm. “You know, I’ve never been up here.”
“Only place you can be alone around here.”
“Go home, Joe. It’s time to go home.”
“That’s what you come up here to tell me?”
“Your mother’s worried about you.”
“And she sent you.”
“If your dad was still around…Joe, you can’t blame the woman for worrying about her son. What’s wrong with you?”
“You don’t want to know, Bren. Trust me.”
“Come on. Can’t be that bad, boyo.”
“It is.”
“Maybe I can help.” Conroy waited but got no response. “You remember the time you got pinched for that thing in Dearborn Square, looking for trouble? ’Member? Who’d you call when you were too scared to tell your old man?”
