They sat silently as the waitress delivered their meals. When she left, Priscilla spoke.
“Don’t you have three girls?” she asked.
Rizzo nodded. “Yeah, Carol’s the baby. She’s almost twenty, a sophomore at Stony Brook. Marie is my oldest, she’s twenty-four. She’s in med school upstate. Jessica is twenty-one. She graduates from Hunter College in June.”
Priscilla buttered her toast and winced. “What a tuition nut to crack,” she said.
“I can’t even dent it, let alone crack it. Everybody is borrowed to the balls.”
“Well,” Priscilla said, “you gotta figure one of them for the job, Joe. They’re all a cop’s kid.”
Rizzo shook his head. “Bullshit. I told you, the job’s changed too much. For the worse. These kids, all starry-eyed, gonna save the world. Ends bad for most of them. You know that.”
She shrugged. “It is what it is,” she said. “You make it work for you if you got the balls.”
Rizzo leaned forward and spoke softly. “Let’s just drop it, okay? This ain’t your problem.”
Priscilla smiled. “What ever you say, boss. My lips are sealed.”
They made small talk as they ate, discussing their individual relationships with Mike McQueen, who had partnered with both of them at different times, and what Priscilla might expect in Brooklyn.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Rizzo said with a smile, “this ain’t exactly that Upper East Side silk stocking house where you worked uniform.”
“I noticed that as soon as I pulled my bike offa the Belt Parkway and hit the streets. Now,” she continued, taking a last sip of coffee and patting her lips dry with a paper napkin, “let’s go do what we’re supposed to be doin’: cruising the precinct, getting the lay of the land. I’m anxious to start raisin’ those stats of yours, Mr. Legend.”
Priscilla stood, stretching out her back muscles. “Let’s go,” she said again.
They left the diner, pausing outside for Rizzo to have a quick cigarette. Priscilla had made it clear: no smoking in the car.
“I don’t want you stinkin’ me up with that crap you smoke,” she told Rizzo.
Rizzo had her take the wheel. As she started the Impala, he reached under the front seat, pulling out a bottle of green mint Listerine. Priscilla watched as he raised the bottle to his lips, swishing the liquid around in his mouth, then opening the door slightly and spitting into the gutter. When he was done, he replaced the bottle, then shifted in his seat and pulled on his shoulder harness. Feeling Priscilla’s eyes on him, Rizzo turned to face her. Seeing her expression, he frowned.
“What?” he asked.
“What? You asking me what? What the fuck did I just see? You got a date, Joe?”
He shook his head. “No. Jen thinks I quit. If I gargle after every couple a smokes, my breath won’t smell when I get home to night. That’s all.”
Priscilla shook her head and glanced into the mirrors, easing the car from the curb. “Damn, Joe. Cops ridin’ this car next shift find that bottle under the seat, they’re gonna figure I’m givin’ up some head for that shield you got me. Don’t leave that shit there. Please.”
He chuckled. “It’s been awhile since I worked with a dame,” he answered with a smile. “I forgot how all of you think.”
“Besides,” Priscilla said, “Jen isn’t stupid. You come home all minty-breath, your clothes smelling like horse shit, she probably knows exactly what’s going on.”
“You could be right,” he said with a shrug.
They spent the next two hours cruising the varied areas of the Sixty-second Precinct, from the bustling, thriving commercial strips of Eighteenth and Thirteenth Avenues, Eighty-sixth Street and Bay Parkway, to the nestled residential blocks, tree-lined and glistening under the October sunshine. Rizzo pointed out the trouble-spot bars and social clubs, the after-hours mob joints and the junkie haunts. Beneath the elevated tracks on New Utrecht Avenue, he pointed to a grimy, antiquated storefront, its plate-glass windows opaque with green paint.
“The Blackball Poolroom,” he said. “It’s nineteen fifty-eight inside there, Cil. Totally.”
He showed her sprawling Dyker Park, with its adjacent golf course, and pointed out the bocce, basketball, and tennis courts. There multiple generations of neighborhood residents played their distinct games with equal intensity. As they cruised slowly along Nineteenth Avenue on their way back to the precinct, Priscilla slowed the car for a red light. Rizzo reached across and lightly touched her arm. When she turned to face him, he pointed diagonally across the intersection.
“Take a good look at that guy and remember him. The tall kid wearing the Giants cap and black coat. That there’s Joey DeMarco, seventeen years old, future serial killer. About once or twice a year the house gets a call. This guy lures stray cats with food. Then he douses ’em with lighter fluid and sets them on fire. They run like hell, squealing like banshees. Usually they die in midstride. Time the uniforms get there, the thing is stiff and charred like charcoal. God only knows how many times he’s done it and never got caught. He’s a real sadistic little prick. So far he hasn’t grabbed some kid or old lady to kill, but mark my words, it’s coming.”
Priscilla glanced up as the light turned green, and she eased the car forward.
“Why’s he still out free, roamin’ with the citizens?” she asked.
Rizzo shrugged. “Why you think? Every time they lock him up, he gets psyched over to Kings County Hospital G Building. The geniuses over there drug him and squeeze Medicaid, or insurance or what ever, dry for thirty days. Then they pronounce him cured, and he walks. The charges get dismissed, and Joey starts savin’ his nickels to buy some more Ronson. And, of course, Mommy and Daddy are no help: they know it’s just our cruel society victimizing their little shit.”
Priscilla studied DeMarco as they drove past him. “Duly noted,” she said.
Rizzo fumbled through his jacket pocket and produced a packet of Nicorette. “See, that’s what I mean,” he said as he began to wrestle with the packaging. “How the job’s changed. Years ago, a kid like that, if he torched a cat, a sector car would grab him and break his fuckin’ arm. After that, he’d either knock it off or go do it somewheres out of the precinct. But not anymore. Those days are gone.”
Priscilla smiled. “There is something to be said for the old-fashioned corrective interview, that’s for sure,” she said.
“Damn right,” he mumbled, at last freeing the gum and popping it into his mouth.
“Joe,” Priscilla said gently, “I never smoked a day in my life, but even I know you got to either chew the gum or smoke the weed. You can’t do both. That nicotine is poison, brother. They spray it on crops to kill insects.”
Rizzo chewed slowly. “Well,” he said with a small smile. “Fuck it. Something’s gotta kill ya. Might as well be chewin’ gum.”
CHAPTER TWO
That evening, Priscilla Jackson gazed across the table into the happy, animated face of Karen Krauss. Karen raised her glass of Chardonnay.
“To your promotion,” she said. “We never really celebrated. Let’s do it now.”
Priscilla reached out, clinking her vodka gently to Karen’s glass of wine.
“As my new partner would say,” Priscilla said, “ salud.”
The restaurant, on Third Avenue in Manhattan, stood just two blocks from their newly rented brownstone apartment on East Thirty-ninth Street. Its main room was softly illuminated beneath a deco style ceiling, a massive oval wooden bar dominating the center of the dining area. Discreet servers hurried to and fro as the restaurant began to fill. It was the start of the long Columbus Day weekend.
Priscilla looked around. “Nice place,” she said. “How are the prices?”
“Not bad, considering the location and style. Not to mention the food, which is terrific.”