But the skeletons had never been buried. Instead, they were still lurking, lurking as evidence in the form of a purloined Panasonic microcassette. Lurking in the basement of Joe Rizzo’s Bay Ridge home.
The tape, McQueen thought. The damn tape that could alter the lives of everyone connected to it.
“Yeah,” Rizzo replied, pulling McQueen from his thoughts. “Like you. But you belong over there, Mike. You’re a sharp guy, and a good cop. Maybe they aren’t.”
“Thanks.”
Rizzo shrugged. “Don’t thank me, I didn’t give you your brains. If they give you half a chance over there, you’ll be runnin’ your own squad in a few years.”
“We’ll see,” McQueen said. “But hopefully I’m done with the streets. Almost eight years, that’s enough, and I still may try for the Academy. Teaching. I think I might like that.”
“I can see you there, Mike. You look the part.”
McQueen smiled. “Well, looks are important. Very political at the Plaza. They’re more a bunch of frustrated yuppies than they are cops.”
“We learned a little somethin’ about politics with that runaway Daily kid, now didn’t we, Mikey?”
McQueen’s face turned more somber. “Yeah, I guess we did.”
They ordered their meals, then caught up on each other’s lives. Rizzo filled him in on Priscilla Jackson’s first few days at the Six-Two squad. McQueen laughed when Rizzo related her first encounter with the precinct Romeo, Nick Rossi.
“That’s my Cil,” Mike said.
Later, with McQueen sipping a cappuccino and Rizzo dark coffee, the older cop shifted in his seat and leaned slightly forward. When he spoke, it was in a soft, low voice.
“We need to talk, kid,” he said.
The change in mood wasn’t lost on McQueen. He placed his cup down on the white linen tablecloth and sat back in his seat.
“Yeah. I figured,” he said, his blue eyes neutral.
Rizzo smiled sadly. “Yeah. I figured you figured.”
McQueen waved for the waiter.
“Another straight-up Manhattan and Dewar’s, rocks,” he said. He turned back to Rizzo. “About the tape. Right?”
Rizzo nodded. “Yeah. About the tape. I know we agreed to sit on it. For six months. Keep Councilman Daily’s dirty little secret for a while longer. In the meantime, we’d get you over to the Plaza, courtesy of Daily and his influence.”
“Yes,” McQueen said, “and get you six months of phantom overtime to pad your pension.”
Rizzo nodded again. “Yeah, but most importantly, to buy us some time. Distance ourselves from it all, so maybe we’d get under the radar.”
The waiter arrived and placed their drinks on the table. McQueen reached for his.
“How’s that overtime thing working out?” he asked.
“Good,” Rizzo replied, with a shrug. “It ain’t exactly phantom, but that’s okay. It’s more legit this way. See, Daily set it up through a flunky of his at the Plaza. They call it Confidential Administrative Overtime. Daily’s man processes the O.T. personally, and it gets billed through the Homeland Security federal funding. City Finance never feels it, and it doesn’t show up on the yearly Six-Two overtime stats, so no red lights start flashin’ over there.”
Sipping his second drink, McQueen spoke around the rim of the glass.
“Do you have to actually do anything for it?” he asked.
Rizzo answered as he reached for his Scotch. “Yeah,” he said. “There’s a large Middle Eastern presence on the northeast side of Bay Ridge. I live on the southwest side of the Ridge, Dyker Heights. So, every so often, I drive by the northeast. Check things out. Talk to some old-timers, the remnants of the Irish and Scandinavians that used to dominate that section of the neighborhood. And I talk to some of the Asian newcomers once in a while. Then I write out a report on the local Muslim activity and fax it over to Anti-terror Intelligence. They file it away, and everybody’s happy.”
“So, okay,” McQueen said.
Rizzo nodded. “Well, by my count, the six months for that tape we’re holdin’ comes up this February. Am I right?”
McQueen shrugged. “Yeah. February.”
Rizzo put down his rock glass and leaned across the table. When he spoke, McQueen could smell the liquor on his breath.
“I need an extension, kid,” he said softly.
Rizzo pretended not to notice the relief that flickered briefly in the young cop’s eyes. He kept his own face neutral.
“Oh,” was all McQueen managed.
“Yeah,” Rizzo said. “An extension. These friggin’ tuition loans won’t go away just because I retire, and it’ll be a couple a years before Marie is a doctor and can assume the loans Jen and me owe, never mind her own. Not to mention my other two girls.”
“How much time, Joe?” McQueen asked casually.
Rizzo spread his hands and cocked his head to the side. “Not sure,” he said. “A year, maybe-say, next October. Then with the administrative O.T., plus my regular O.T., I can get out with enough pension to carry the loans till the girls can take ’em off my hands. And by then, we’ll be far enough away from it that maybe no one will connect us to it when it does go public.”
McQueen smiled. “I understand. To tell you the truth, I could use a little more time myself. I need to make some contacts, some friends at the Plaza. That way, when we put that tape into the right hands, if the shit hits the fan and Daily does realize we screwed him, at least I’ll have some allies. Some cover.”
Rizzo nodded. “Sounds fair, Mike. After all, I’ll probably be out, my pension in hand, outta their reach. You should have some cover, too. Insurance, sorta.”
McQueen drank deeply, draining the glass. “Yeah,” he said. “Insurance.”
Later, leaving the restaurant after they’d eaten their lunch, Rizzo walked McQueen to his shiny black Mazda, which sat parked at an expired meter on Old Fulton Street. They shook hands.
“We’ll get it done,” Rizzo said solemnly. “Just a little later than we figured.”
McQueen, two Manhattans sitting heavily on his eyelids, smiled sadly. “Yeah,” he said, “we’ll get it done.”
PRISCILLA JACKSON took a seat on the heavy wooden chair beside Joe Rizzo’s squad room desk. She tossed the legal-size papers onto the cluttered desk surface.
“Well, Joe,” she said, “I read all three.”
Rizzo glanced at the sworn statements of Jimmy Cocca, Andy Hermann, and Nunzio Nottadomo, taken earlier by Six-Two personnel.
“Good,” he said. “Now you know as much as I do. Good statements, weren’t they? Bobby Dee might not be the best bull on the squad, but he
Priscilla nodded. “I’ll remember that. Now what? Do we start on that bar canvass?”
Rizzo shook his head. “Not yet.” He looked at the wall clock. “It’s only twenty after four. If we do it, we should start callin’ around to the bars later, about eight or so. More likely to catch the same bartender who worked last night.”
“Makes sense. So, what now?”
Rizzo sat back in his seat. “Well,” he said, “I figure we discuss it. The shooting, I mean. I got a theory.”
“Yeah, Mike told me about those theories of yours. So let’s hear it.”
Nodding, Rizzo said, “Okay. By the way, Mike says ‘hi.’ Next time I’ll bring you along, he’d love to see ya.”
“Good deal, Joe. So, what’s the theory?”
“Okay, get comfortable,” Rizzo said. “You read the statements. Whadda we got? Incident starts in a well- known, popular local pizza joint, a place the shooter’s frequented over the last year. So, let’s assume he lives someplace close by. He wears jungle fatigues and drives a pickup truck. Schoenfeld and Rossi and the uniforms canvassed the residents of Seventieth Street, presumably where the truck was parked while the shooter ate his pizza then got his ass kicked by Tucci. Nobody they spoke to could say anyone livin’ on the block owns a pickup.
