Lou Manfredo - Rizzo's Fire

THE FOLLOWING afternoon, Thursday, at four o’clock, Joe Rizzo once again worked the phone in the Six-Two detective squad room. After some fifteen minutes, he replaced the black plastic receiver on its cradle and stood. He crossed the room and sat heavily in the chair beside Priscilla’s desk.

“Just got off the phone with Gordon’s Sporting Equipment,” he told her. “Their corporate office over in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. You ready for this? Our man Jurgens works in the Brooklyn store. Over on Bay and Shore Parkways, right here in the precinct. Gordon’s is big on hunting stuff-rifles, tents, knives, clothes, stuff like that. They’re one of only two places in the whole precinct. Imagine? We’da been showing that artist sketch around, maybe showin’ it to Jurgens himself and askin’ him if he ever saw the guy.” Rizzo laughed. “Who figured the guy worked in a place like that?”

Priscilla shrugged, a smile touching her lips. “This job stopped surprisin’ me a long time ago,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes I forget how it is.”

“Did you call over to the place?” she asked.

Rizzo shook his head. “Didn’t have to. Friggin’ Nazi at corporate was all anxious to show me what good citizens these hunter types are. He went into the company payroll file. Jurgens is scheduled to work till closing to night, nine o’clock.”

“You wanna make the pinch at the store?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I think. Guy seems to be a boozer, chances are the best time to catch him sober is at work. And he’ll probably be less likely to give us a hard time if he isn’t tanked up. Plus, he may be embarrassed in front of his coworkers and just deny it all and come along quietly.” Rizzo paused for a moment. “Yeah. I think we grab him at work,” he continued. “After we bring him in, we’ll print him and have my buddy Torres compare the partial from the shell casing. That should be the clincher.”

“Let’s go, then,” Priscilla said. “We take him now, I can run him through Central Booking and still get home by midnight.”

“What makes you figure I’d stick you with the paperwork?” Rizzo asked lightly.

“Shit,” said Priscilla, “I never seen an old pro take a collar on straight time. We pinch the guy at ten to night, you’d be shoving me aside for the overtime. But not this early in the tour.”

“I forget sometimes, Cil,” Rizzo said, “you been on the job for a while.”

She nodded. “Long enough, brother. Long enough.”

“You run that DMV?” Rizzo asked.

“Yeah. Jurgens has a two-year-old black Ford F-one-fifty pickup registered to his home address on Stillwell Avenue.”

“Good,” Rizzo said. “Another nail in his coffin. You haven’t been out in the field with that gold shield for a full week yet, and you cleared two cases. You’re a friggin’ star already.”

“ We cleared two cases, Joe. And I think it’s you who’s the star.”

Rizzo laughed. “Yeah. I forget that, too, sometimes. C’mon, let’s go grab this asshole. I got a feelin’ he’s about to lose his God-given right to bear arms.”

Later, as Priscilla drove the Impala toward the large shopping center that housed Gordon’s Sporting Equipment, Rizzo cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. Priscilla glanced over.

“What?” she asked.

“Well,” Rizzo said, wrestling a piece of Nicorette from its packaging and putting it into his mouth. “This guy Jurgens. Chances are he’ll come along nice, like a good boy, but, you never know. He could decide to get stupid. Real stupid.” Rizzo looked at his partner’s profile, his eyes hooded.

“You up for some shit, Cil?” he asked.

She blinked hard. “What?” she asked.

Rizzo shrugged. “Just the two of us. If he wants to rock and roll, we gotta get it done. I’m just sayin’…”

She shot him a hard look, her dark eyes blazing.

“Yeah, Goombah, I hear what you saying. You ever ask Mike that question?”

Again, Rizzo shrugged. “Not in so many words,” he said mildly.

“Any of your male partners?” she demanded.

With a weary smile, Rizzo said, “Yeah, now that you mention it. One or two.”

Priscilla swung the Impala to the side of the avenue, stopping sharply and slamming it into park. The car rocked against the inertia as she turned to Rizzo.

“On my worst day,” she said, her eyes hard, “I can kick Mike’s butt and yours, too. Don’t worry ’bout it. Don’t you ever worry ’bout it. And you can just kiss my black ass, Joe, for asking me that question.”

“Okay, I hear you. Loud and clear.” He leaned toward her and smiled. “You can’t blame a guy for askin’.”

She shook her head. “Damn,” she said. “You are some piece of work.” She slipped the car into gear and pulled away. “We can handle this dude, Joe,” she said. “ I can handle him myself. You just suck on that gum, brother, and chill out.”

THE SHORE Shopping Plaza was a sprawling, L-shaped complex of stores, built on a landfill that extended into the waters of Lower New York Bay. To the north, the Verrazano Bridge arched over The Narrows, connecting the boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island. The mall housed a huge Pathmark supermarket, a Citibank boasting a drive-thru appendage, a half dozen specialty shops, and the anchor of the complex, Gordon’s Sporting Equipment. The shopping plaza was only a short drive from the Sixty-second Precinct building.

As she drove across Shore Parkway and prepared to turn left into the complex’s large outdoor parking lot, Priscilla sighed.

“I got some mixed feelings about this,” she said.

“About what?” Rizzo asked.

“About picking up this jackass where he works. I know the guy’s a fool and deserves a kick in the ass, but it’s kinda cold, grabbing him in front of his coworkers.”

“Better to cuff him in front of the wife and kiddies?” Rizzo asked. “There’s no easy way to do this. Besides, he fucked up, he gets what he earned. End of story. When you were a uniform you made spontaneous collars, usually right at the scene. This is how detectives make arrests.”

Priscilla shrugged. “I know,” she said. “Just don’t seem right, is all.”

Rizzo grunted. “Let me explain about that, partner. There is no right. There is no wrong. There just is. ”

She angled the Impala toward Gordon’s, accelerating across the sparsely occupied parking lot.

“Yeah,” she said. “Mike told me about that. Said it was some of the nonsense your old man handed you when you were a kid.”

Rizzo opened the glove compartment and reached for his pack of cigarettes.

“It was my grandfather,” he said. “My old man died when I was nine, so me and my mother and sister moved in with my grandparents. Right here in Bensonhurst, over on Eighty-fourth Street and Seventeenth. Matter a fact, the high school where that guy Jacoby was wavin’ his joint, New Utrecht High, that’s my alma mater.”

“Oh, yeah?” Priscilla asked, parking the Chevy twenty yards from Gordon’s side entrance doors.

Rizzo nodded and undid his shoulder harness. “Yeah,” he said. “I went from high school to the army for four years, then into the NYPD.”

Priscilla put the car into park and shut it down. “I got my associates at Bronx Community, then went on the cops,” she said.

They climbed out of the car, Rizzo spitting out Nicorette and lighting his Chesterfield. They both leaned against the Chevy as he smoked.

“So what made you pick the cops, Cil?” he asked. “With me, it was a family thing. My grandfather was a cop for most of his life. I grew up with it. It was all I ever wanted to do. I was even an M.P. when I was in the Army.”