Pete Hamill - Brooklyn Noir

McQueen stared out of the window into the falling rain on the dark street. He didn’t turn his head when he spoke.

“Joe, I’m telling you, I want this case. If you’re in, fine. If not, I go to the squad boss tomorrow and ask for the case and a partner to go with it.” Now he turned to face the older man and met his eyes. “Up to you, Joe. You tell me.”

Rizzo turned away and spoke into the windshield before him. He let his eyes watch McQueen’s watery reflection. “Pretty rough for a fuckin’ guy with three days under his belt.” He sighed and turned slowly before he spoke again.

“One of the cops in the ER told me this broad was a looker. So now I get extra work ’cause you got a hard-on?”

McQueen shook his head. “Joe, it’s not like that.”

Rizzo smiled. “Mike, you’re how old? Twenty-seven, twenty-eight? It’s like that, all right, it’s always like that.”

“Not this time. And not me. It’s wrong for you to say that, Joe.”

At that, Rizzo laughed aloud. “Mike,” he said through a lingering chuckle, “there ain’t no wrong. And there ain’t no right. There just is that’s all.”

Now it was McQueen who laughed. “Who told you that, a guru?”

Rizzo fumbled through his jacket pockets and produced a battered and bent Chesterfield. “Sort of,” he said as he lit it. “My grandfather told me that. Do you know where I was born?”

McQueen, puzzled by the question, shook his head. “How would I know? Brooklyn?”

“Omaha-fuckin’-Nebraska, that’s where. My old man was a lifer in the Air Force stationed out there. Well, when I was nine years old he dropped dead. Me and my mother and big sister came back to Brooklyn to live with my grandparents. My grandfather was a first grade detective working Chinatown back then. The first night we was home, I broke down, crying to him about how wrong it was, my old man dying and all, how it wasn’t right and all like that. He got down on his knees and leaned right into my face. I still remember the smell of beer and garlic sauce on his breath. He leaned right in and said, ‘Kid, nothing is wrong. And nothing is right. It just is.’ I never forgot that. He was dead-on correct about that, I’ll tell you.”

McQueen drummed his fingers lightly on the wheel and scanned the mirrors. The street was empty. He pulled the Impala away from the curb and drove back toward the Belt Parkway. After they had entered the westbound lanes, Rizzo spoke again.

“Besides, Mike, this case won’t even stay with the squad. Rapes go to sex crimes and they get handled by the broads and the guys with the master’s degrees in fundamental and advanced bullshit. Can you imagine the bitch that Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug would pitch if they knew an insensitive prick like me was handling a rape?”

“Joe, Bella Abzug died about twenty years ago.”

Rizzo nodded. “Whatever. You get my point.”

“And I told you already, this isn’t a rape. A guy grabbed her, threatened her with a blade, and was yanking on his own chain while he held her there. No rape. Abuse and assault, tops.”

For the first time since they had worked together, McQueen heard a shadow of interest in Rizzo’s voice when the older man next spoke.

“Blade? Whackin’ off? Did the guy come?”

McQueen glanced over at his partner. “What?” he asked.

“Did the guy bust a nut, or not?”

McQueen squinted through the windshield: Had he thought to ask her that? No. No he hadn’t. It simply hadn’t occurred to him.

“Is that real important to this, Joe, or are you just making a case for your insensitive-prick status?”

Rizzo laughed out loud and expelled a gray cloud of cigarette smoke in the process. McQueen reached for the power button and cracked his window.

“No, no, kid, really, official request. Did this asshole come?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask her. Why?”

Rizzo laughed again. “Didn’t want to embarrass her on the first date, eh, Mike? Understandable, but totally unacceptable detective work.”

“Is this going somewhere, Joe?”

Rizzo nodded and smiled. “Yeah, it’s going toward granting your rude request that we keep this one. If I can catch a case I can clear up quick, I’ll always keep it. See, about four, five years ago we had some schmuck running around the precinct grabbing girls and forcing them into doorways and alleyways. Used a knife. He’d hold them there and beat off till the thing started to look like a stick of chop meat. One victim said she stared at a bank clock across the street the whole time to sort of distract herself from the intimacy of the situation, and she said the guy was hammering himself for twenty-five minutes. But he could never get the job done. Psychological, probably. Sort of a major failure at his crime of choice. Never hurt no one, physically, but one of his victims was only thirteen. She must be popping Prozac by the handful now somewheres. We caught the guy. Not me, but some guys from the squad. Turned out to be a strung-out junkie shitbag we all knew. Thing is, junkies don’t usually cross over into the sex stuff. No cash or H in it. I bet this is the same guy. He’d be long out by now. And except for the subway, it’s his footprint. We can clear this one, Mike. You and me. I’m gonna make you look like a star, first case. The mayor will be so proud of himself for grabbing that gold shield for you, he’ll probably make you the fuckin’ commissioner!”

Two days later, McQueen sat at his desk in the cramped detective squad room, gazing once again into the eyes of Amy Taylor. He cleared his voice before he spoke, and noticed the bruise at her temple had subsided a bit and that no attempt to cover it with makeup had been made.

“What I’d like to do is show you some photographs. I’d like you to take a look at some suspects and tell me if one of them is the perpetrator.”

Her eyes smiled at him as she spoke. “I’ve talked to about five police officers in the last few days, and you’re the first one to say ‘perpetrator.’”

He felt himself flush a little. “Well,” he said with a forced laugh, “it’s a fairly appropriate word for what we’re doing here.”

“Yes, it is. It’s just unsettling to hear it actually said. Does that make sense?”

He nodded. “I think I know what you mean.”

“Good,” she said with the pitched nod of her head that he suddenly realized he had been looking forward to seeing again. “I didn’t mean it as an insult or anything. Do I look at the mug books now?”

This time McQueen’s laugh was genuine. “No, no, that’s your words now. We call it a photo array. I’ll show you eight photos of men roughly matching the description you gave me. You tell me if one of them is the right one.”

“All right, then.” She straightened herself in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. She cradled the broken right fingers in the long slender ones of her left hand. The gentleness made McQueen’s head swim with — what? — grief? — pity? He didn’t know.

When he came around to her side of the desk and spread out the color photos before her, he knew immediately. She looked up at him — and the sapphires swam in tears yet again. She turned back to the photos and lightly touched one.

“Him,” was all she said.

“You know,” Rizzo said, chewing on a hamburger as he spoke, “you can never overestimate the stupidity of these assholes.”

It was just after 9 on a Thursday night, and the two detectives sat in the Chevrolet and ate their meals. The car stood backed into a slot at the rear of the Burger King’s parking lot, nestled in the darkness between circles of glare from two lampposts. Three weeks had passed since the assault on Amy Taylor.

McQueen turned to his partner. “Which assholes we talking about here, Joe?” In the short time he had been working with Rizzo, McQueen had developed a grudging respect for the older man. What Rizzo appeared to lack in enthusiasm, he more than made up for in experience and with an ironic, grizzled sort of street smarts. McQueen had learned much from him and knew he was about to learn more.