Lou Manfredo - Rizzo's Fire

The dream was always the same. They were alone on the highway. Just Rizzo and the body. No vehicles, no Carusso, no citizens. The cold wind blew over the desolate scene, chilling him.

The girl, scarred, battered, bloody, and naked against the dirty, cold concrete of the roadway, gave her death rattle. The pulsating blood went still, tranquil, inanimate.

Rizzo held a soiled blanket. Gently, he covered the girl’s naked body and face. As he stood on the empty highway, the wind rushing in his ears, gazing down at the covered corpse, his eyes began to tear.

Then, slowly, the blanket began to stir. The young woman pulled the blanket from her face with a bloodied, trembling hand. Rizzo stepped back suddenly, enveloped in a fear that overwhelmed his grief. He stared at the pretty young face, blond hair wisping lightly in the breeze against the skin, the eyes now wide open. Blue, sharp, piercing. The pale lips parted, and in a throaty, wet voice, the young woman pleaded to him. “Help me,” she said.

Terrified, he backed farther away, his bowels going loose with fear.

“Help me,” she whispered, desperation and chilling terror in her eyes. “You’re a cop. Help me. Please.”

Then he would awaken, violently sweating, arms flailing, panic-stricken. Time after time.

Rizzo sighed. “And that,” he said aloud, “is the reality of it.”

“The reality of what?” he heard suddenly. Startled, he turned quickly. Jennifer, rubbing at her hair with a fluffy towel, stood naked in the bathroom doorway.

“The reality of being a cop,” he said to her. Rizzo shook his head sadly. “That’s what Carol doesn’t get. What she doesn’t understand.”

Jennifer crossed the room, sitting beside him on the bed.

“Is this about that damn nightmare of yours?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yeah. That’s what triggered it this time, this business with Carol going on the cops. She figures she’ll be a big hero, Charlie’s friggin’ Angel, riding to the rescue in her blue-and-white. Then she’ll spend the next twenty years learning the truth. How you wind up kneeling on the road watchin’ some kid die, with some old cop tellin’ you to note the time. For the incident report. Note the time and go get a goddamned blanket.”

Jennifer laid a hand on his shoulder but remained silent. Rizzo glanced at her face, saw the tension in her jaw.

Forcing a smile to his lips, he leaned over and gently kissed her cheek, laying a soft hand on her thigh.

“We’ll handle it, Jen,” he said. “Believe me, we’ll handle it.”

She nodded, still silent, grim-faced.

He nuzzled her ear. “We need to have a date soon, hon,” he said, lightening his tone, willing his body to relax. “Okay?” he asked.

“A date?” she said, a small smile forming. “You mean, like when we were in high school?”

Rizzo allowed his own smile to broaden. “Well,” he said, “considering you’re sitting next to me naked on the bed, I figure more of a college-type date. Remember?”

Jennifer brushed his hand from her thigh and stood. She removed the towel from her head, shaking her dark hair free.

“Yes, of course I remember. But relax, sailor, let’s not start ‘dating’ just now. I’ve got to get to work.”

“Well, then, get that nice-lookin’ ass out of my face or you may be late for homeroom.”

Jennifer laughed, her tension nearly gone, and spun from his exaggerated efforts to grab her, disappearing back into the bathroom and slamming the door behind her.

Later, as they sipped coffee at the kitchen table, Rizzo now in his bathrobe, Jennifer dressed and ready for work, he saw the tension return to her face.

“Can we really do it, Joe?” she asked. “Can we really handle this with Carol?”

He smiled, trying to convey a confidence he didn’t feel.

“Sure we can,” he said. “This expedited hiring they announced, that shook me a little, I admit. I figured we had more time. But… I got a plan.”

Jennifer glanced at the wall clock. “I have a few minutes. Tell me. What’s your plan?”

He shrugged. “Well, it’s nothing new. What we’ve always done with the girls. All three of ’em. The truth. My plan is the simple, friggin’ truth.”

She leaned in over the table, closer to him. “Meaning what?” she asked.

“The Daily thing, for one,” Rizzo said. “That whole mess me and Mike stumbled into. The tape I got stashed in the basement. The whole fuckin’ mess. And that other business, the internal affairs thing that drunk Morelli got me jammed up with. That whole rotten ball of crap. I’m gonna tell Carol about it. All of it. How I.A.D. was squeezin’ me to rat out Morelli; how I played Councilman Daily to use his juice to squash it. I’m gonna tell her how me and Mike are sittin’ on that tape-withholding evidence, riskin’ an accessory charge, all because we couldn’t trust anybody, couldn’t go to the bosses with any confidence. And let’s face it, to grease our own wheels, too. To get Mike to the Plaza, get Cil her gold shield, get me some pensionable overtime. I’m gonna tell her that to fight them, to do what she would consider the ‘right’ thing, we had to become them, no great difference between us. Not in Carol’s world, anyway. I’m gonna lay it all out for her. Make her see that her daddy’s not some knight on a white horse. No, Daddy’s just a street fighter, fighting both sides of every battle. And in the real world, that’s what makes a good cop. The fire to fight the fire and still survive. It’s not right, it’s not wrong. It just is .”

Now Rizzo paused, allowing himself to calm down. “The fire to fight the fire,” he repeated. “That and the blanket. Always the blanket.”

He sighed. “To cover up the bodies,” he said softly, nodding. “To cover up the fuckin’ bodies.”

LATER THAT morning, Rizzo sat sipping coffee and looking into the bright, animated eyes of his youngest daughter, Carol.

“Nice place,” he said, eyeing their surroundings. “I always liked it here.”

“Yes,” Carol answered, reaching for her own container of coffee. “It is pretty cool.”

The Student Activities Center sat squarely in the middle of the Academic Mall on the sprawling Long Island campus of Stony Brook State University.

Now Carol smiled across the small round table at her father, her light brown eyes twinkling under the fluorescent lighting.

“So,” she said casually. “To what do I owe the honor of this unexpected visit from my father.”

Rizzo nodded slightly. “Fair question, I guess,” he said.

She put her coffee down and twisted her lips as she spoke. “Bet I can guess,” she said.

Rizzo laughed. “Yeah, I bet you can.” Then, after a small pause, his face grew somber. Leaning inward on the table, he interlocked his fingers, laying his hands atop the table’s cool surface.

“The test,” he said. “Next week.”

Carol sighed. “What about it, Daddy?” she asked, her voice firm.

“Would you have been right?” he asked. “If you had guessed, I mean?”

Carol, without amusement, nodded. She waited for him to continue.

After another pause, he did. “There’s no reason for you to take it, hon,” he said. “Why sit through a couple a hours of a police entrance exam for a job you’re not gonna take anyway?”

Carol shook her short brown hair. “Except I am going to take it,” she answered, her tone clipped. “As soon as I clear the medical and physical and psychological.” She paused, holding her father’s cool gaze. “I am going to take it,” she repeated. “It’s what I want.”

Rizzo shook his head, the carefully rehearsed and chosen words of his argument fading to a slight, panicky anger.