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.
“It’s a bad idea,” he said.
“Is it?” Carol said, more forcefully than she had intended. “For who? Me… or you?”
Rizzo’s anger rose. “For you,” he said, his voice cold.
Carol shook her head sadly. “Really? Are all cops bad liars, Dad, or just you?”
Rizzo grunted with bitterness. “The best liars in the world are cops, Carol,” he said. “That’s one of the first things you learn when you go on this job. How to lie.” He shrugged. “If I had a dollar for every time I testified without perjurin’ myself, I couldn’t pay for these two coffees.”
She gave a humorless laugh. “Okay, Dad, exaggerate. Anything to help you make your point.”
He shook his head. “I don’t have to exaggerate to make my point. The truth is more than good enough. All I’m saying is being a cop isn’t a good career for a young girl, a young person. It’s not the kinda life you want to lead, Carol, it’s-”
His daughter cut him off, her own anger now tugging at her facial muscles. “Just what makes you think you know what kind of a life I want to lead?” she said. “Wasn’t it you, you and Mom, who lectured us every damn day about how we could be this, we could be that, anything a boy could do, we could do? Wasn’t that you? Now, all of a sudden-”
Rizzo interrupted. “This has nothin’ to do with that,” he said, more harshly than he had intended. “Yeah, you could be a cop, just as good a cop as any son of mine coulda been. But you know what? If you were my son, I’d be tellin’ you the same thing. Yeah, you can be a good cop, you can be a good ax murderer, too. But that don’t mean you should be one, just ’cause you can be.”
“But Daddy…”
Rizzo shook his head so sharply, the movement transferred to the tiny table, shaking their coffee containers. “The job isn’t what you think it is,” he said. “Maybe it never was, but it sure as hell isn’t these days. You wanna be some kinda hero, you wanna change the world, saves lives? Become a schoolteacher, like your mother. You think I ever prevented a crime? You think I ever made a friggin’ difference? Maybe once, twice in twenty-seven years. The resta the time, I was too late-the woman was already raped, the baby already thrown out the window, the pizza delivery guy already shot to death for the twenty bucks he was carryin’. It’s always already done, Carol, you don’t stop it from happening.”
Now it was Carol who shook her head sharply. “That’s total B.S., and you know it. You’re only saying that to make a point. All those arrests you made over the years, hundreds, maybe a thousand. You have no way of knowing how many crimes, how much grief and suffering you prevented, how many lives you saved by putting all those criminals behind bars. You know it’s true, Daddy, you know-”
“It sucks the life outta you,” he said, his anger now clashing with a sudden onset of depression welling in his chest. “It eats at you, a little bit at a time, till one day you wake up and you ain’t there anymore. Somebody else is. Somebody you partnered with years ago, when you were a rookie, some old cop long retired, or dead. And now he’s back, wearin’ your clothes, livin’ your life.” Rizzo’s eyes implored her. “Believe me, honey. It sucks the life outta you. It puts out your fire. Like a slow, constant trickle of water, drop by drop, bit by bit, till the fire is all gone.”