Lee Child - First Thrills

Eddy begins to sound like a salesman. Schalaci thinks hard about this, leaning back against his desk.

“They’ll never call you again.”

Schalaci nods slowly and a sense of relief washes over him.

“They won’t call me?”

“No, sir. It’ll be taken care of. I can promise you that.”

Schalaci has not looked at me once this whole time. He gets up off his desk and walks past me, putting the cuff link into his other sleeve.

“Honey, I’m stepping outside with these gentlemen for a moment.”

Eddy whispers to me.

“Guy’s loaded. Shame about her.”

Schalaci puts on his blazer and we follow him out the door. We leave The Kid in the stairwell playing with his gum, shooting knives at me from his eyes. We go back down the stairs and outside. We follow Schalaci past a silver Corvette, a couple of blocks over, around the corner and into a Citibank. Eddy hops in a corner store quickly and buys a pack of cigarettes. He pounds it into his palm, drops the cellophane on the sidewalk, and flips his lucky. He pops one in his mouth and offers me another. I take it.

“Why you smoking all of a sudden?”

“Don’t know. Big job, you know. Got me nervous.”

I don’t know, I really don’t. Eddy is smoking, so I want to smoke, too.

“Figure in a month or two, call the guy up, tell him it’s taken care of. He’ll be happy, you know, thank God nothing happened to him. Rest of his life he’ll think some policeman took money, fixed the case and that’s that.”

I look at Eddy’s unassuming face and think of Pop, the transformation after the police and Waterfront Commission raided his docks; outraged beyond baseball, beyond a Puerto Rican wife. A few bosses and many of his friends did some serious time behind that raid. Pop came to The City to look in my face with his hound eyes. “You know how that made me look?” he demanded of me. “I didn’t know,” I told him. I didn’t, I swore I didn’t.

I think of The Kid and wonder, if Pop had smacked me just once, let me know who was in charge, let me know how he felt. Enough of the hound dog eyes, the lovable loser. Softest crook I ever knew. If he’d laid it down, shown some huevos, maybe it wouldn’t be as hard as it was. Maybe I wouldn’t have even tried to be a cop.

Eddy inhales a menthol with vacant confidence, a man who isn’t wrong even when he’s wrong.

“Eddy,” I tell him, “something’s not right about this guy. You know?”

“Hey, Ronny, I been at this a long time, I know when something’s off. This guy’s perfect. He assumes he can throw money at anything, make it go away, so he can act any way he wants. Didn’t even hesitate, like, forty? That’s it?”

“I don’t know. The guy never looked at me, never once. Wasn’t right.”

“Trust me. This is right as it gets.”

Schalaci comes back out of the Citibank.

“Lets go back up to my apartment,” he says.

Eddy nods like it’s a good idea and charges forward, heavy eyes squinting in the morning light.

Eddyis spent when we get back up to the apartment, wheezing and coughing. Ms. Schalaci gets him a paper towel from the kitchen and Eddy wipes himself down.

“Detective?” asks Schalaci, pushy. “This way.”

We follow him into the study. I see Ms. Schalaci out of corner of my eye, following us. Margaret Gallo.

Schalaci turns. I mean, Woodrow Collins turns. Woody. Asshole.

I leave the door open behind us. Eddy coughs and coughs. He doesn’t notice the door. Eddy is the best police impersonator. But he doesn’t notice a lot.

Schalaci holds out an envelope. Eddy coughs.

“Forty?” he asks.

Schalaci nods. My pulse is a jackhammer.

Eddy covers his mouth with the paper towel. He reaches with his other hand, nodding. He coughs into the towel. He takes the envelope.

My name is Eddie Schalaci. I am Eddie Schalaci again.

Detective first-grade Woody Collins, a.k.a. the phony Schalaci, takes out his badge and shows it to Eddy, whose eyes swell with disbelief.

“Eddy May, you’re under arrest for impersonating a police officer, extortion, accessory to child prostitution, and child abuse.”

Detective third-grade Margaret Gallo, a.k.a. Ms. Rebecca Schalaci, covers us from behind, her badge in one hand, her service pistol in the other.

I’m detective second-grade Eddie Schalaci, a.k.a. Ronny Hertz. I don’t pull out my badge. Mine is already showing in the breast of my detective’s blazer.

For Pop’s eulogy, I talked about his humor, how when I began going bald he told me, “Ed, I got a way you can save your hair.” He showed me an empty cigar box. “Save it in here.” I talked about how he loved giving people nicknames, he called his brother Whiney because his friend Whiney left Bensonhurst and Pop missed him. He called a guy Johnny Once, because he only came around once in a while. I talked about his devotion to my mother, who died when I was born, and how that was the first of the many ways I disappointed him. Some laughed, but others just stared with hard, narrow brows. I didn’t mention the raid, less than a year before his death and the start of the indulgence that killed him. I didn’t mention his devotion to Scotch, and the other powders and pills that he unsuccessfully hid from me. All I could think of was the night in that Midtown bar when he told me about the raid, and I told him I didn’t know.

Shackled, head hanging in defeat, Eddy stares at the floor between his plain black shoes as Detective Woody Collins tries to get him to confess to more crimes. That was how Pop looked. He was beyond the rage he had a right to. He was broken, too old or helpless to even be mad about it. Eddy, his frown heavy like wet clay, is unreachable.

“We’re gonna appeal to the pedophile community, Eddy. Make a deal. They’ll come out the woodwork once they find out about you.”

Collins looks at me. It was his idea to call the mark Eddie Schalaci, my name. He didn’t want to be the only one who had to feel like a filthy child molester.

“We know you got a scrapbook, Eddy, of all your little bullshit scams.”

Collins is an asshole.

I fish in my pocket for Eddy’s pack of cigarettes, from when we took his belongings earlier. I toss the menthols on the table in front of Eddy. His callous fingers pick out a cigarette, and put it in his dry mouth. I light it for him with his lighter. His hands shackled, he raises the pack to me. I take one, and light it myself, then pace over to the mirror.

Eddy breaks his silence.

“I feel like The Unit, you know? When that cocksucker hit that goddamn pitch. Over his head, Ron. Pitch was over his goddamn head.”

I nod, without the heart to tell him my real name, and turn to the mirror. There are the three of us. Eddy looks betrayed, as he always does. I look a bit like me again, Eddy Schalaci. Eddie Schalaci. Undercover works like that. Looking in a mirror. You never know when someone’s behind it, looking back at you.

THEO GANGIis the author of Bang Bang (Kensington Publishing), a hard-boiled New York City-based crime thriller. His stories have appeared in The Greensboro Review and the Columbia University Spectator. His articles and reviews have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Inked magazine, and Mystery Scene magazine. His second novel, Twist the Trees (Kensington), will be released in early 2010. Visit him at www.theogangi.com.

W henJ. B. Prescott, the hugely popular crime novelist, died, millions of readers around the world were stunned and saddened.