Lou Manfredo - Rizzo's Fire

“I don’t get it,” Rizzo said. “What, did you talk about that book last night at your class? What’s it got to do with Frankie?”

Priscilla turned back to face him. “Don’t get me started on last night, Partner. Don’t get me started.”

Rizzo swung his eyes back to the road, smiling. “Sore subject? What happened, dog eat your homework?”

Priscilla hesitated, and after a moment Rizzo glanced her way.

“Was it that bad? You gonna clam up on me about it?” he asked.

She shook her head. “The guy who teaches the class, his name is Thom Carlyle. Ever hear of him? Wrote a bunch of novels all the critics loved but nobody bought. Not that he gives a shit, his family is old money. Anyway, he comes up to me after class, tells me how good my stuff is, how impressed he is. Wants me to come to his place Saturday night for a party he’s throwing. Lots of writers, agents, editors, people like that. He wants to introduce me to his literary agent. He thinks she can help me.”

“Well,” Rizzo said, “I can see why you’re so pissed off. Imagine the nerve of the son of a bitch, tryin’ to help you out like that.”

“That’s not the issue, Joe. He leads into this invite by tellin’ me how he originally didn’t even want to accept me into his fuckin’ class at all. Says my entry submission was weak-how’d he put it?-‘Rankly amateurish.’ ”

“But he took you in anyway.”

“Oh, yeah, he took me. Right after he got a phone call. Seems like Karen’s old man knows a board member at the Y, so the wheels got greased for me and my weak entry submission.”

Rizzo widened his eyes in mock surprise. “I’m fuckin’ shocked. You mean, shit like that really happens? Wheels get greased? There goes my last shred of faith, right out the fuckin’ window.”

“I don’t wanna discuss it,” Priscilla snapped. “Shouldn’ta brought it up. Leave it at this, it just pisses me off, okay? Karen shoulda known better than to go to her old man behind my back. What am I, the little black poster child? The charity of the fuckin’ week? What?”

Rizzo shrugged as he drove. “Maybe you’re just family, Cil. Maybe the guy’s doin’ what he’d do for his daughter. What I’d do for my daughter.”

“Well, I ain’t his fuckin’ daughter.”

“Daughter-in-law, then.” Rizzo turned briefly to her and winked. “Son-in-law, what ever the fuck. Relax. Welcome to the world. Besides, this guy, this teacher, now he’s singin’ a different tune, right? Now he figures you got the goods. You want my advice?”

“No. Not really.”

“My advice,” Rizzo went on, ignoring her, “is to go to that party. Kiss some ass, or maybe get your own ass kissed. This could be the break you need if you’re serious about this writing stuff.”

She sat silently for a moment. “I’m serious, Joe. Real serious.”

“Okay, then. End of discussion. Go do what you gotta do. And thank Karen’s old man. The guy did just what he shoulda done.”

After a few moments of silence, Priscilla spoke up, her tone leaving Rizzo no doubt: the discussion was over.

“What now? About this Hom case, I mean.”

He shrugged. “Well, we’ll follow Frankie’s lead to The Rebels. But we’re going to have to develop this in de pen dent of him. Even if we could get the D.A. to use Frankie as an eyewitness, which, by the way, we could never do, can you imagine him on the stand? The newest, greenest Legal Aide lawyer could tear him apart, probably make him seize out right in the witness box.” Rizzo shook his head. “No, Frankie’s done his part. He’s out of it from now on. We gotta work it from some other angle. An angle that plays out with the perp copping.”

“No argument here, Partner,” Priscilla said. “We’ll just leave Frankie in his happy place.”

“With the half-assed descriptions we got from all the vics, we couldn’t even do a valid photo array. And if we tried a mug scan with no description on record, the defense would scream fishing expedition, demand a pretrial Wade hearing, and maybe get any I.D. precluded. Then we’d have nothin’. But now, with Frankie’s info, now maybe we can figure a way to go. We’ll see. Let’s get back to the precinct.”

The “bad kids” that Frankie had referred to were members of a local street gang known as The Rebels. They were one of two such gangs housed in the Six-Two, the other being The Bath Beach Boys. The Rebels were the younger of the two gangs, serving as a training ground for eventual admission into the older and more professionally criminal Bath Beach Boys. The Bath Beach Boys, in turn, then served as an apprenticeship for further criminal progression to the Brooklyn organized crime mob currently headed by Louie “The Chink” Quattropa.

The Rebels were generally aged fourteen or so to eighteen or nineteen. If by age twenty or twenty-one a member had failed to move up to The Bath Beach Boys, his organized-gang days were considered over, and most such failures moved on to relatively mundane lives of semirespectability or descended into drug addition. Some entered loner lives of crime, usually resulting in their premature death or long, repeated periods of incarceration.

During his many years in the precinct, Rizzo had dealt with both groups, as well as several neighboring street gangs from the Sixty-eighth, Sixty-sixth, Sixty-first, and Sixtieth Precincts.

Rizzo parked the Impala on Benson Avenue, and he and Priscilla walked a short block to the precinct. They went to the rear of the first floor and entered a small office marked “Community Policing.”

Rizzo made the introductions.

“Priscilla Jackson, meet Sergeant Janice Calder, our community policing officer. We’ve apparently caught her on a very rare night tour. What’s up with that, Jan? Have a fight with the old man?”

The uniformed sergeant, a twenty-year veteran and an acquaintance of Rizzo’s, smiled. “No,” she said. “My daughter is home from college for a few days, so I switched to four-to-midnights this week to spend some time with her. Her friends keep her busy at night.”

Rizzo nodded, turning again to Priscilla. “Janice here makes sure the good people of the Six-Two are informed, educated, and aware. That way, they can all get to die in bed, unmugged, unraped, unshot, and unmolested. She also helps the precinct cops do a better job servin’ the needs of the citizens, not to mention fixing an occasional parking ticket that might inconvenience some community board member or well-connected brother-in-law.”

Calder laughed, reaching to shake Priscilla’s hand. “Now, Joe here knows damn well I’d never do such a thing,” she said. “Welcome to the precinct, Priscilla.”

The two women made small talk, searching for friends in the department they might have had in common.

Then Rizzo got to the point.

“Is Tony in, Jan?” he asked, referring to her office mate and the precinct youth officer, Tony Olivero.

She shook her head. “No, he’s off till Saturday. Does a day tour when he comes back in.”

Rizzo nodded. “I need to go through his stuff. The Rebel photo book, specifically.”

“No problem,” Calder said with a shrug. “Help yourself.”

Rizzo moved to Olivero’s desk.

“What’d the little darlins do this time?” Calder asked, returning to her own desk and sitting down.

“We figure one of ’em for three street robberies,” he answered.

Calder’s eyes widened. “No shit? Those three the last month or so?”

Rizzo nodded, slipping a five-by-eight-inch photo album from the lower drawer of Olivero’s desk. “Those are the ones.”

She frowned. “Sounds wrong to me, Joe. The Rebels might be dumb, but they ain’t stupid. The Chink finds out they’re robbin’ the locals, he may whack a Rebel ass or two.”