Steele nodded.
August said, “What a mook.”
Steele turned to young Addison. “Stand down,” he said. “This thing plays out. Fat Philly will flip any way he has to.”
Addison hesitated.
“Go ahead,” his stepfather whispered.
Leaning over his coffee cup, Luther Addison told them what else Knight delivered and how tests City College ran cleared him. “I think we can do this by the book,” he added
“Whose book?” August asked.
Rosemary Barone worked as a secretary at Christ Hospital, a sprawling brick complex across the Hudson in downtown Jersey City. Addison was told he’d find her sooner or later in sunlight, smoking two Newports at a time and cursing ex-husbands. Imagine a rusty nail come to life, Addison was advised. That’s Rosemary Flanagan Hill Barone.
“Yeah, and?” she said when Addison identified himself. He wore a gray turtleneck under a forest green corduroy jacket with gray elbow patches.
He went gentle. Jersey City had a huge African American population and he was betting she didn’t much like that: All the other smokers around her were white too. The black smokers were gathered at the curb maybe thirty feet away.
“I was wondering if I might have a word…”
“‘Have a word’? One? What kind?”
The white smokers tittered, their condescension sprinkled with uncertainty and quavering defiance.
He said, “It’s about your husband Andy.”
“Tell me he’s dead,” she said, scowling under a blond bouffant some twenty years out of date.
“No, he’s not-”
“Not? Wrong word.”
“It’s about your mink coat,” Addison continued. “The one that was stolen at Aqueduct.”
She let loose an ugly rattle Addison took for her laugh. “You think I look like I ever had a mink stole?”
“Andy said you did. He said you left in it your trunk-”
“I left a mink stole in the trunk of my car at the racetrack? Me?” She spit. “How much did he get for it?”
“The stole you never had?”
“From insurance, wise guy.”
Addison replied, and then she started spewing.
Twenty-five minutes later, her supervisor came looking for her.
“Call me,” she told Addison, as she followed the hardy black woman back inside. “I’m just getting started on that miserable pimple.”
Addison shot up in bed, certain the ringing phone meant his stepfather had passed. But someone had gotten his unlisted number, which he’d given only to his family, the Guardians, a couple of college buddies, and NYPD. Racial epithets mixed with profanity told him where the caller got it.
Wrapped in a robe, he went to his chair in the living room and listened to the traffic below on Columbus Avenue, trying to quell his anger. One o’clock and he knew he wasn’t going back to sleep. He checked on the baby, looked over the notes he made after talking to Hill’s ex, and then replayed the conversation he’d had with the old cops-the taciturn Steele, the jovial but vaguely dangerous August, and his stepfather, the reasoned, reliable W.E.
The original Guardians, he thought, as he started looking at it through their eyes.
No sense telling IAD or his CO what he’d learned about Hill.
Two hours later, he was knocking on Joe Dalrymple’s apartment door.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Dalrymple said. Rousted from bed, he was wearing boxer shorts and a Yankees T-shirt.
Addison encouraged his partner to step onto his fourteenth floor balcony, which overlooked downtown Forest Hills.
“Cut your losses while you can, Joe.”
Dalrymple didn’t know Addison had a temper. “I don’t-”
Addison held up his hand.
“What?” Dalrymple said. “What do you think you know?”
“I know Andy Hill worked a deal with Fat Philly and held a grudge against Ciccanti.”
“Oh. You know?” he sneered.
“Little Flaps jacked him in the Aqueduct lot, and he gave up eight hundred dollars.”
“Never. Andy wouldn’t give up a dime, especially if he was carrying.”
Addison said, “Easier to get Fat Philly to return the eight hundred and then double dip through insurance.”
“You don’t-”
“And Hill lets Fat Philly stay in business as long as he kicks back.”
Dalrymple frowned.
“We’ve seen his jacket, Joe. IAD looked at him. The insurance company called on the mink claim. He didn’t tell you?”
Dalrymple hesitated. “Take it up with Andy,” he said finally.
“Hill is tight with the Gambinos, and Fat Philly going to the Genoveses puts him in the middle. Maybe you too.”
That was out-of-the air conjecture, but both cops knew Hill was dirty. Killing Fat Philly’s Little Flaps told the Gambinos Hill was still their boy; at the same time, it kept Fat Philly’s business in Hill’s pocket.
As for setting up a fellow member of NYPD…
“Black man bothers you so much, Joe, you want to take his career?”
“Get lost.”
“That’s it, isn’t it? Hate owns your soul, Joe.”
“Listen to yourself,” Dalrymple said. “Black this, black that, and I’m riding with you. You’re a pain in the tail, Luther, and you don’t get it. There’s no room for you. None.”
“In what? No room for me in what?”
Shivering in the late-night air, Dalrymple said, “Nobody’s going to stand by and let it happen. NYPD ain’t going equal opportunity, Luther. Your father knew to shut up, but you…” He stopped. “Hell, Luther, you know this.”
“So I’m a killer, Joe? I killed that kid?”
“It is what it is-”
“Hill knows I’m riding with you,” Addison said. “He remembers all the times you told him what I said. He figures two birds: He gets Ciccanti and you get rid of your partner-”
Suddenly, Addison ’s heart crashed, his stomach jolted, and he understood it as clear as if his stepfather had told him what had happened.
He grabbed Dalrymple and rushed him to the balcony’s edge, bending him back over the rail.
“Luther!”
“Hill pulled the throw down to shoot me, didn’t he?”
“Luther, wait-” Dalrymple was halfway into the night, dangling a few hundred feet above the concrete, parked cars, and prickly bushes below.
“I go down, you take out Ciccanti and the Cobra throw down winds up in his hand.”
“For God’s sake, Luther-”
“To kill off the Guardians,” Addison barked. “To keep it-Say it’s so.”
“Luther, Jesus-”
“Say it!”
“Luther,” he screamed, “Luther, yeah, all right. But I saved your life, Luther. Andy set you up. You and Ciccanti. Two dead, but when I heard, Luther-”
Addison spun his partner and tossed him to the balcony floor.
“Luther, listen. I told him, we can’t shoot a cop. I told-I mean, I didn’t want you dead.” He scrambled to his feet. “I wanted you gone. Shut up, gone, not dead. You’re ruining this good thing, you and your other nig-”