Cornelia turned to Rizzo. “They are certain, Sergeant. The attack took place on Seventy-second and Fifteenth, the northeast corner to be exact. Afterward, they walked over to the next street, Seventy-first, because there was a store open there, a late-night grocery. That’s where the police were called from. Neither of them has a cell phone.”
“Yeah. I figured. My mother is seventy-eight and she just agreed to get cable TV,” Rizzo said.
Cornelia smiled. “Generational traits transcend cultures, I guess.”
“Seems like it.” Rizzo cleared his throat, turning again to Hom Feng and his wife. “So,” he said, “you were attacked right on the corner, right in front of the schoolyard? The P.S. one-twelve school-yard on the corner?”
“Yes,” said Hom Feng. “Schoolyard.”
Rizzo turned to Priscilla. “You may be my lucky charm, Detective Jackson,” he said with a wink. “Why don’t you ask the rest of the questions? I’ll take some notes.”
He turned back to the Homs. “This might take awhile,” he said.
“Time well spent, I think. Time well spent,” Rizzo added.
LATER, SITTING in the Impala in front of the Hom residence, Priscilla recorded and expanded her notes while the minute details of the interview were still fresh in her mind.
Rizzo turned to her.
“Like I told them,” he said, “muggings around here are rare. Only time we see one is when some asshole junkie gets so strung out, he forgets to be afraid and grabs some old lady’s purse.”
“Afraid? Afraid of what?” she asked, without looking up from her pad.
“Afraid of Louie Quattropa. Remember your first day in the precinct? We drove around and I pointed out the Starlight Lounge? That’s Quattropa’s base of operations. He’s the Brooklyn mob boss, commands the old Columbo gang. Louie takes a hard line with local street crime, especially since it don’t put any money in his pocket. He thinks he’s building goodwill in the neighborhood by enforcing the laws he deems worthy of enforcin’.”
She looked up from her writing. “Enforcing how?” she asked.
“Oh, kinda like Genghis fuckin’ Khan enforced the law. With a heavy hand.” Rizzo dug out a piece of Nicorette. “If you’re gonna work the precinct, you oughta know its history,” he said. “You know, like when you were assigned the Upper East Side and you knew where all the ‘Jackie-O slept here’ signs were located. Like that.”
“Okay, Joe. Educate me.”
“Well, years ago some asshole decided to rob the famous jeweled crown that was on display in the local parish, Regina Pacis. Quattropa wasn’t the boss of all bosses then, just the Bay Ridge-Bensonhurst capo. About a month later, the crown comes back to the church by parcel post. Then the cops in the Seven-Six find a local b and e man with his hands chopped off, two slugs in the back of his skull, and a crucifix nailed to his forehead. Theory is, the guy’s the one who stole the crown, and he had pissed off Quattropa.”
Priscilla turned back to her notes. “Oh,” she said. “So it went like that.”
“Yeah. It went like that. It always goes like that when you mix righteous indignation with a murderous, megalomaniacal personality.”
“Megalo-fuckin’-maniacal?” Priscilla said. “You takin’ vocabulary lessons?”
“Maybe it’s me should be the friggin’ writer,” he said.
Shaking her head and smiling, she agreed.
He resumed his tale. “Last time we figure Quattropa stepped in was ’bout four, five years ago. When this crazy kid from Sixty-fifth Street wound up frozen solid, a kid all the cops knew, Perry Pino. Took two days to thaw him out.”
Priscilla looked up, her eyes wide. “Now that story you gotta tell me, Joe.”
“Yeah,” he said with a chuckle, “all the boys and girls like that one. See, down one of these blocks, I forget which one, there’s a free-standin’ ice pavilion. About twenty-five feet long, ten feet high, with steps leadin’ up to a platform in front of it. You put your money in the slot, and the thing dispenses giant bags of ice. Ten, twenty pounds, what ever you want. Lotsa local businesses use it-restaurants, fish markets, like that. So, one day, this old lady from the neighborhood, she goes to the pavilion to get some ice. She’s throwing a birthday party for her grandson and she’s making home-made ice cream, havin’ a backyard cookout, real Norman Rockwell shit, Brooklyn style. Well, seems like our boy, Perry, was in need of a few bucks. Gas money, maybe, for his shiny hot-rod Camaro. So he decides to mug the old gal. Trouble was, somebody saw him do it, somebody close to Quattropa.”
“Sounds like trouble in River City,” said Priscilla.
Rizzo nodded. “Big time. So, about a week later, the owner of the pavilion comes to restock his ice machine. He goes around back, finds the door broken into. And when he opens the freezer, guess what? There lies Perry, duct-taped hand and foot, gagged, beat up a little. And frozen solid. They fuckin’ put him in there alive.” He shook his head. “When I was a kid, I couldn’t even watch my grandfather cook live crabs. He’d throw the poor bastards into the boilin’ water, then talk to them in Italian and whack them off the rim of the pot with a wooden spoon when they tried to climb out.”
With another head shake, he added, “But Quattropa and the boys, they got no problem tossin’ some dumb-ass teenager into the deep freeze.”
After a moment, Priscilla spoke up. “Now I can see why the Six-Two street crime stays manageable.”
He laughed. “Yeah, and there are other examples. ’Course, none a those incidents could ever be traced back to Louie. But everybody knew. Cops, citizens, skells, everybody.”
Priscilla finished up her notes and started the car.
“Well,” she said cheerfully, “that was fun. What now, boss?”
Rizzo glanced at his watch. “Let’s go back to the house,” he said. “Drop yourself off. Then I’ll take the car and head downtown. I have to be in court this afternoon on one of me and Mike’s old cases.”
Priscilla pulled the Impala out into the street, heading for the precinct. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll catch us up on paperwork and work the phones on some of our cases.”
Rizzo nodded. “Good idea. Talk to Vince, too. Get him to switch us to four-to-midnight tomorrow.”
“Why?” she asked. “We’re scheduled eight-to-four tomorrow.”
“Yeah, well, remember inside the Hom house I said you were my lucky charm?”
“Yeah. What’s up with that?”
“Well, we just might be catchin’ a break on this mugging. But we need to do the leg work at night. I’ll explain it all tomorrow. Just get Swede to switch our tours.”
“That’s a problem for me, Joe,” she said.
He looked at her. “Oh? Why’s that?”
She shrugged. “Tomorrow’s Tuesday. I got my writing class at the Y. Six-thirty to nine. I was expecting a day tour, not a night tour.”
Rizzo raised his brows. “Well, excuse me,” he said. “I forgot about that. Okay, then, Wednesday. Have Swede switch us on Wednesday.”
“Okay, I appreciate it, Joe.”
“Hey, it’s the least I can do,” he said. “After all, who else can I find to write my memoirs?”
He lowered the passenger window and spit his chewed-up Nicorette into the street.
“I sure as hell couldn’t do it myself,” he said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, RIZZO SAT at his desk in the Six-Two squad room, frowning down at a copy of the Daily News.
He sighed and reached for his coffee. It was three forty-five, and Priscilla would be arriving shortly for their rescheduled four-to-midnight.
He looked back to the newspaper. Statewide election coverage from the day before was featured. The local results were much less prominent, but had hit Rizzo’s eye like a laser.