“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.”
Priscilla nodded. “Lotsa guys come on the job like that. Me, I was brought up in a pretty fucked-up environment. My mother was wild, drunk, always runnin’ with men.” She turned to Rizzo and smiled sadly. “But I knew this old black beat cop when I was real young. His name was Ted and he always treated me special. Sometimes I would pretend he was my father, bein’ how I never actually knew my real one.” She shrugged. “So I guess, in a way, we got the same reason, kinda a family thing.”
“Yeah, kinda,” Rizzo said. “But, tell you the truth, if I was a kid now, twenty, twenty-one, I’d never wanna come on this job. It’s apples to oranges from when I started.” He looked out over the flat waters of the bay, nestled under the darkened sky and dragged deeply on the cigarette. “Apples to oranges,” he said again, a wistful note in his voice, an unfamiliar tone to Priscilla’s ear.
She nodded. “Lots of old-timers feel that way. Down on the job, sayin’ it’s changed, too political, can’t trust nobody, all that. But, you know what, Joe? It’s the times that’ve changed. Some for the good, most for the bad. But the job has always been good for me. Gave me order, structure. Somethin’ to be proud of. I know it can eat people up and spit ’em out-I’ve seen plenty a that-but if you tough it out, it’s meaningful. It’s real, Joe. Real.”
Now Rizzo, the wise-guy edge back in his tone when he spoke, patted her arm.
“Yeah,” he said, tossing the cigarette away. “Real. Just keep in mind what my grandfather said. What I say about no right, no wrong. That ain’t nonsense, like you called it. That’s wisdom, kiddo. Wisdom.” He glanced at his watch.
“Now,” he said, his eyes twinkling under the artificial lights of the parking lot. “Lets us go do something meaningful. Somethin’ real. Let’s go lock up this shit-bag.”
RIZZO LEANED back casually, resting his shoulders against the stacked boxes behind him. He, Priscilla, the store manager, and a sullen Carl Jurgens were gathered in the stockroom at the rear of Gordon’s Sporting Equipment. After standing in awkward silence for a moment, the manager cleared his throat.
“Well,” he said, glancing from one to another. “I’ll leave you here, then?” The man, tall and thin, in his mid-thirties, smiled at Rizzo. “If this is okay with you, that is. As I said, if you want more privacy, my office is…”
Rizzo held up a hand. “This is fine,” he said. “Thanks.”