James Sheehan - The Law of Second Chances

She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a revolver and handed it to him. “Here, take this,” she said.

Benny took the gun and held it in his hand, pretending to look it over while he tried to feel comfortable with it. He hated guns, hated being around them at all.

“Do you even know how to fire it?” she asked.

“Sure, I do,” he blustered. “You just aim and pull the trigger.” He started to point the gun at an imaginary target.

“Be careful with that. It’s got a hair trigger and there’s no safety on it,” she told him. “Don’t even think about using it. He’ll give you the money. Ten thousand to him is like pennies to you and me. Just point the gun at him and tell him to hand the cash over.”

Benny lowered the gun. “Okay, okay. I got it. So what’s the split?” he asked.

“What split?”

“The money. I figure it should be fifty-fifty since I’m doing everything now.”

“You’d be doing nothing if it wasn’t for me, shithead. It’s a seventy-thirty split, that’s it. Take it or leave it.”

Benny was a bit surprised she hadn’t brought the subject up herself. Anyway, he had his answer. She was going to fuck him, so it was okay for him to fuck her first. He felt a lot better now.

“I’ll take it,” he replied.

She then pulled what appeared to be a makeup case out of her jacket pocket. She found a stoop nearby, hobbled up the steps with the aid of the banister, and sat down.

“C’mere,” she said. “I’ve got something to give you a little confidence.” Benny walked up the steps and saw she was laying out a few lines of coke on the mirror of her makeup case. She offered it to him and he gratefully accepted. The lines of coke disappeared up his nose in an instant.

“One more,” she said and repeated the ritual. Benny had smoked a ton of dope before he’d left for Kettle of Fish for the same reason-to work up some courage. Now he was flying so high he barely knew what planet he was on.

“I’ll be up the block waiting,” she said “We’ll get a cab. And remember what I said-don’t even think about fucking me over.”

Benny gave her his best Li’l Abner, innocently shaking his head back and forth. His own mother would have believed him.

Carl arrived promptly at ten and parked in his parking spot, the one he had paid the city a fortune for. The one that had its own sign: “No Parking Anytime. Violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” Carl knew that for the right amount of money you could get anything, including your own parking space.

As he emerged from the car, he was surprised to see a wide-eyed young man in front of him holding a gun. No need to panic. He’d been in this situation before. It was surely about money and, therefore, negotiable.

“What can I do for you, young man?” he asked, looking down at Benny, who stood five feet eight inches tall with his boots on .

Carl never got an answer. Instead, he heard a sharp crack and felt a stinging pain in his head, a pain so severe it caused him to lean forward over the open car door so far that his head crashed into the outside of the door’s window. Then he slid to the ground beside the door. While he was lying there in shock, he felt the man’s hands reach into his inside jacket pocket and pull out his cash-the money he had brought for Angie. Carl wanted to stop him but couldn’t move. Then everything went black.

Mary Walsh never answered the phone after ten o’clock. With thirty years of marriage to a cop, the last twenty of which he’d been a homicide detective, she was used to the late-night-sometimes middle-of-the-night-calls, and she wanted no part of them. The hairs on the back of her neck always stood up when that damn phone rang past ten and her husband Nick answered it.

“The murder has already been committed,” he’d invariably tell her. “I’m just mop-up duty.” But Mary never bought it. Every time he walked out that door, she was afraid that he might not come back. All she had to do was read the papers to be assured of that possibility.

This night was no different. When the phone rang at a few minutes to eleven, Mary wouldn’t go near it.

“Can you get that?” Nick yelled from his seat in the bathroom. Mary picked up the phone without answering it and walked it to the bathroom. She opened the door and extended her arm and the phone to her husband without looking in.

“Here,” she said. Nick was able to reach out and grab the phone while maintaining his seat on the throne.

“Walsh,” he answered, just like he was in the squad room. That frosted Mary. The man was never off duty, even at home-even on the toilet.

“Nick, this is Severino.” Anthony Severino was Nick’s latest partner in homicide. They’d been together for almost a year. Nick was the senior man by about ten years.

“Yeah, Tony, whaddaya got?”

“Some high-powered guy got whacked about an hour ago on Seventy-eighth and East End. The captain wants us down there right away.”

“All right, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

Nick and Mary lived in the same rent-controlled apartment on Ninety-seventh and Park where Nick had grown up with his parents and two younger brothers. It was the only way they could afford to live in the city. Mary’s dream was a house upstate, or in New Jersey or Rockaway Beach-they could never afford Long Island-but Nick wouldn’t hear of it.

“People get murdered all over the city at all hours of the day and night,” he told her. “I can’t be driving in from the suburbs like some commuter. I gotta be there right away. Besides, you’re living on Park Avenue.” It was a quip that had always made Mary laugh in the early years. The real Park Avenue ended at the imaginary line south of Ninety-sixth Street. Nowadays, after all the years of being a cop’s wife and making the necessary sacrifices, she simply ignored the remark.

Twenty minutes later Nick was standing over the body of Carl Robertson, his eyes exploring every detail of the dead man’s body-searching for the obscure clue. It was one of the things that separated him from the run-of-the-mill homicide detective. In this case, there was nothing subtle about the fact that Carl had met his demise as a result of a gunshot wound to the head.

The place was swarming with uniformed police officers, gawkers, and reporters from both print and television. Nick was the guy in charge, and he looked the part. He was a big man, a few inches over six feet, with broad shoulders and an ample waistline that he carried well, even though it seemed to be growing an inch or two each year. He was constantly telling himself that he was going to start working out “one of these days.” Tony Severino, on the other hand, worked out like a madman, but in some respects it did him no good. At the end of the day, Tony was still short and stocky.

A perimeter had been set up with tape before the two detectives arrived. The perimeter was supposed to secure the crime scene, but too often everybody-cops included-just walked through like it was Disneyland. That wasn’t going to happen on Nick Walsh’s watch.

“Get those uniforms outside the tape line,” he told Tony. “I don’t want the crime scene destroyed. Have them do crowd control or something.” Technically, uniforms and detectives were the same rank, but at a homicide scene the detectives were in control. “And get the fuckin’ press as far away from here as you can,” Nick added. He hated the press. They had a tendency to report what they wanted to report, regardless of the facts-although Nick wasn’t above using a reporter from time to time to put out a story.

Tony set about giving the uniforms assignments outside the lines and moving the press and everybody else out of the way.