In August of ’77, when Sam was finally captured, New York City was as close to defeat as it ever was or is ever likely to be. Beaten down by years of near bankruptcy, brutal winters, blackouts, and Mr. Berkowitz, the city was a madhouse. Any street cop would know. I knew. Rage was boiling just beneath everybody’s skin, beneath the city’s streets. We were always a pinprick away from explosion. And none of us was immune to the Vietnam hangover: our national headlong rush into pot, punk, polyester, and Plato’s Retreat. I think sometimes if Gerald Ford had wanted to be a more effective president, he should have moved from the White House to Studio 54.
Anyway, when Son of Sam was arraigned, the brass wanted to make sure there were plenty of cops around for crowd control. So they bussed in uniforms from precincts all over the city. I was one of those uniforms. If you catch any of the old video from that day, you can see me standing just behind Detective Ed Zigo and to Son of Sam’s left. Although I couldn’t have known it then, it was my first appearance on television and my final shift in uniform. While I was gone, the precinct’s linoleum had been waxed for the first time in months and some careless schmuck had thrown a piece of carbon paper onto the floor. When I returned, my foot found that piece of carbon paper. Cops who were there say the sound my knee made when all the ligaments snapped was enough to make you puke. Apparently, a few people did. I don’t remember, because my head smacked the floor pretty hard. I woke up in Coney Island Hospital having taken my first misstep into the wine business.
Five months and two surgeries later, I was put out to pasture with pain pills and a patrolman’s pension. Aaron had found the perfect store, but we were still a little short on funds and worried about getting our liquor license. That’s when Rico Tripoli, my closest buddy from the Six-O, told me about some missing kid and how maybe, just maybe, if I found the kid, his influential father could get us our financing and license and how we’d be set for life. Yeah, sure! What Rico neglected to mention was that he didn’t give a rat’s ass about the missing kid or my future. I was to be his shortcut to a gold shield and the means to the end of Francis Maloney’s political career.
Rico was right in a way. We all got what we wanted. Rico got his gold shield. His handlers got Francis Maloney to retire from politics. Aaron and I got our financing and our license and we were set for life. I got a wife and love and a family as well. Yes, we all got what we wanted, everyone but Francis Maloney. I hated my father-in-law, but I never blamed him for his hating me for my part in his demise. We all got what we wanted and the only happy one of us was Aaron.
My big brother was tinkering with the register as I walked through the creaky wooden doors of Bordeaux In Brooklyn. Aaron had aged well. His hair was thinner and all gray, but his shoulders were still broad and unbowed. Other than my chronic disinterest in the business, he had everything he ever wanted. Our success had washed away the sting of our dad’s small-time thinking and big-time failures. He had a wife he probably loved more now than the day they married, great kids, a big house on Long Island, and good health. Aaron didn’t think so, but I envied him. It was a blessing to be born knowing what you want and how to get it. With few exceptions, my wants shifted with my cases.
“Hey, big brother.”
“Christ, will you help me with this thing,” he barked.
“Here, shithead.” I banged the side of my fist into the till and it slid open. “You should come to this store more often. The drawer’s been sticking like that for years.”
“You should come to any store more often.”
“Touche.”
“So what’s this mishegas with your wife?”
“Ex-wife, as everyone keeps reminding me.”
“All right, your ex-wife.”
“What mishegas? What’s wrong with thinking your dead brother dug his way out of his grave, smashed his dad’s headstone to bits, and is making phone calls?”
“ Oy gevalt! ”
“Yeah, big brother, oy gevalt indeed.”
“What are you doing about it?”
“I was just about to call Ghostbusters.”
“Very funny, Moses.”
“I’m doing the only thing I can do. I’m gonna look into it. First, I have to pick your niece up at the airport.”
He grinned. My brother and Sarah had a special affinity for one another. “When does she get in?”
“I’m leaving for LaGuardia in about an hour.”
“Does she know what’s going on?”
“Some of it. Look, Aaron, I just want you to know, I’m going to take as long as it takes to find out what’s going on.”
“We’ve prospered for two decades without your full attention. We should be able to survive another few weeks.”
“Fuck you!”
“Fuck you, he says to me,” he stage-whispered to an invisible audience. “Let’s face it, the best thing you ever did for us was getting us started. That shit with Katy’s dad, look, you never wanted to tell me much about it, okay. It was your business, but enough already.”
I wanted to explode. He was right, but he was wrong too. I put in my time. I got us some of our biggest accounts, hired our best people. Even Aaron would have to admit that much. Klaus and Kosta were integral parts of our success and had been with us from year one. Both now owned small percentages of the business. Kosta was our head buyer and Klaus, besides running the day-to-day operations of the New Jersey store was, along with our lawyers and accountants, looking into the possibility of our franchising.
“Without me, there’d be no business,” I said.
“Yeah, I heard that refrain before. It used to mean something, too, when you said it last century. That was then. Four stores and twenty years later, it’s enough already.”
“Did Abraham Lincoln write that for you?”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Go play cops and robbers with your Spanish hottie.” Aaron was very much of my parent’s generation. I’m surprised he didn’t call our African-American employees colored. He wasn’t a bigot. Far from it. He was just old. He was born old.
“Puerto Rican.”
“What?”
“Carmella is Puerto Rican and she’s not my hottie. Where do you come up with these terms anyway, Reader’s Digest?”
“What’s wrong with Reader’s Digest?”
No matter what our arguments started over, they always ended in the same place.
“You want coffee?” I asked.
“Sounds good.”
“The usual?”
“Always. Hey, little brother…”
“Yeah.”
“I love ya.”
“I know. Me too.”
The Northwest Terminal was bustling. The area airports were always busy, but there was just something about LaGuardia that brought out the closet claustrophobic in even the most hardened New Yorker. I found myself wishing I’d made the travel arrangements instead of leaving them up to Sarah. All this foot traffic was going to make things that much more difficult. No doubt a late afternoon or evening flight would have been a better option, but there was no use giving myself shpilkes over it now. For the moment, I only wanted to think about the best thing in my life, Sarah.
I loved the kid so much it hurt. Maybe it was her only-child status or that we were baseball buddies, but I had never gotten used to her being away from home. The sting was particularly sharp today with LaGuardia being just a stone’s throw away from Shea Stadium. Sarah had a double-major as a kid, learning about baseball and aircraft as we sat and watched the big jets roar over Shea on their final approaches to the airport. I remembered the first game I took her to, a weekday matinee against the Padres. She lasted only a couple of innings in the baking sun and passed out on my shoulder. When she woke up, she said she was firsty. I remembered that day for other reasons too.