Kate laughed. “I’ll remember that.” She paused a moment then asked, “Does Cody ever lose his temper?”
”I heard him raise his voice once, coupla years ago. But you can tell when he’s angry. Those eyes of his’ll burn a hole right through the wall. But then it’s over, just like that. He smiles and gets on with business. Right now he’s getting edgy. I mean, so far we ain’t got a clue. That dame in the red dress is it. This one’s really clean. Not a print, no DNA. Nothin’. Just Handley-deader than Honest Abe.”
He turned left on First Avenue and headed north.
“Your companion’s a nurse, huh?”
“She’s a doctor. ER Chief of Staff. Right now she’s squiring a new group of interns through their first year.”
“That sounds like a pain. What’s her name?”
“Song.”
“What’s her first name?”
“That’s it. Dr. Song Wiley. Her parents were hippies back in the late sixties, hanging in Haight-Ashbury. She was born in a one room flat. Five people living together. Says she was ten before she realized that some people smoked real cigarettes.”
Ansa chuckled. “Yeah,” he said. “Been there.”
They drove past Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village with the East River reflecting the full moon in the background.
“Where did you meet?” Ansa asked.
“It was really strange. We both answered an ad for an apartment at the same time. There we were, the two of us, seniors in college, and a real estate gal who didn’t know what to do. So Song looks at me and I look at her and then she says, ‘Why don’t we go to dinner and work it out.’ We ended up sharing the apartment. Been together ever since. Fourteen years.”
“Terrific. There’s Bellevue. Where to?”
“Emergency entrance will be fine.”
“Hell, that’s not much of a leap, is it?”
“Well, not really when you think about it.”
“At least she’ll understand the crazy hours.”
He pulled up at the ambulance entrance. “Gimme a call on the cell when you’re ready to leave, I’ll run you home.”
“That’s way off your beat, Jonee. I live up on 94 ^ th Street.”
“Ah, I’ll have Butch meet us at 42 ^ nd and take you from there. He’s running the north end. One of the perks, Kate. Makes up for the lousy hours. Welcome to the crew.”
Kate walked through the swinging emergency doors and down a hallway to the night desk. As she approached it she saw Song, who was only five-two, a pretty woman with bright red hair and a pixie nose. Forty-four and looked thirty. She glanced up from her desk and grinned elfishly at Kate, her Asian eyes looking oddly comfortable in her freckled face.
“You’re happy,” she said. “I can tell. You got it, didn’t you?”
“I had it already, sweetheart. Cody just ran some of the rules by me and gave me this.”
She pulled out the whistle and showed it to her mate who took it and held it in the palm of her hand.
“Sterling silver.” Song admired the craftsmanship.
“Tiffany’s. Cody gives one to every member of the crew.”
“It’s already initialed.”
“How about that?”
“Pretty classy boss you got there.”
The white-haired chief night nurse came down the hall and Song called her over. Her name was Myrza and she was an old pro.
“Hey, Kate,” she said.
“Hi, Myrza.”
“Take the desk for thirty,” Song said. “We’re going over to the deli and get a sandwich.”
“Don’t dally at the deli, girl, it’s Friday night,” Myrza yelled after them. “They’re already backing up in the holding room.”
Song and Kate walked out the driveway toward First Avenue.
“We’re already working a case,” Kate said excitedly. “They call it a show. Cody came back from doing the entry and told me I was the new ADA and introduced me around and I sat through an incredible briefing and then I got my first assignment. I went with Cody to tell some rich Wall Street snob his future son-in-law was murdered last night.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Song squeezed her hand and pulled Kate to a stop. “I can hear your adrenalin rushing.”
“I know. I wish we were going home.”
“Sorry, sweetie, I’m on a thirty-six-hour shift. But I’ll be home by seven.”
“Oh, great. My partner is picking me up at six.”
“Hey, I’ll be off for twenty-four hours. I’ll be there when you get home. Congratulations, darlin’.” Song stood on her tiptoes and they wrapped their arms around each other and kissed there under a street light in the middle of First Avenue.
It was 8:53 p.m.?
When Frank Rizzo got back to his small apartment after dinner with some of the old timers, he opened the cabinet in the kitchen, looked up at the unopened bottle of Jack Daniels on the top shelf, and said, “Hello, you son of a bitch. Eat your heart out.”
It was a tough night for him. There were several-holidays, anniversaries-but October 26 was always the one that hit his heart the hardest. Forty-three years ago he had his first date with Jessie. It was her nineteenth birthday and they had gone to the Tivoli Theater to see the movie “West Side Story,” which had opened ten days earlier, and she had cried all the way home. He was twenty, had been a cop for two months, and didn’t know what to do with the pretty, dark-haired teenager who had her face smothered in his handkerchief and was sobbing uncontrollably.
When her father opened the door, he immediately assumed the worst.
“What’d ya do with my little girl,” he roared, balling up his fist.
“I didn’t do anything,” Rizzo pleaded. “It was the movie.”
“Movie? What movie?”
She rushed past her father into her mother’s arms. “Poor Maria,” she wailed. “They killed Tony and she was really in love with him.”
Rizzo looked at her equally bewildered father and held his hands out at his sides.
“What d’ya do?” he said helplessly.
What he did was date her for six months and then marry her. They had weathered thirty-six years, a son and a daughter, three grandchildren, the long hours and often fear-filled nights of a cop’s life, and were thinking about Rizzo taking early retirement and moving to Florida.
He got the call while interrogating a robbery suspect at the precinct station. She was dead by the time he got to Bellevue. She had collapsed in a super market two blocks from their apartment. No warning. No previous history. Her heart had just stopped, Snap! Like that, she was gone.
Rizzo was alone for the first time in thirty-six years. His son lived in Denver. His daughter was a flight attendant stationed in Atlanta. The members of the Manhattan South Precinct were his real family.
So he took three weeks off, buried his wife, and his kids helped him gather her clothes for Good Will. And when they left, Frank went back to work. He hired a cleaning lady twice a week, ate most of his meals at Chauncey’s, the precinct hangout, and did his drinking there.
Booze crept up on him. Soon he was closing the bar at night, having a shot to get started in the morning, eating lunch alone so he could sneak a drink or two to get through the day. It was his precinct captain who finally suggested that he take a thirty day paid leave and go into rehab. The suggestion surprised Rizzo. On his way home that night he bought a bottle of Jack Daniels, put it in the cupboard and quit drinking.
Four months later, Cody offered him a dream job-second in command of the TAZ, with a promotion to go with it.
He had been clean and sober for 2,017 days.
He got a glass, poured himself a glass of ginger ale, went in the living room and turned on the television set. When the remote turned up nothing of interest, he put on the DVD of “West Side Story” and as the overture began, he slumped down in his easy chair and let memories envelope him like a warm blanket.?