Clearly the rabbi had received the going flat rate for his services as he picked up the speed with which he rendered his graveside ceremony. Spoke so quickly the words blended together into a kind of buzzing. When he was done, the few of us there tossed some spadefuls of dirt atop Sophie’s coffin. That was that. My dad didn’t even bother asking if I wanted to sit shiva with him. If I said no, he would’ve been forced to back down. So why bother?
As I walked away from the gravesite to the one pitiful limo, cousin Ira hooked his arm through mine. In my family this was a major sign of affection.
“Does this mean we’re engaged?” I asked.
“Just keep your mouth shut, wiseguy, and keep walking.”
“But the limo, my dad...”
“I’ll drive Todd home,” he called to my father, waving him to go on ahead.
We stopped until the limo and the two or three other cars pulled away. I remember the sick look on my Uncle Harry’s face when he saw me. Thought he might actually have been sad his sister hung herself, naked on the tree in front of her house, shit and piss running down her cold, bare legs. No, not Harry. He got into his black El Dorado and sped away, the front tires spitting gravel back in defiance.
When I tried removing my arm from Ira’s grip, he squeezed my hand till it nearly broke.
“Come on, asshole, someone wants to meet you.”
Ira was my mom’s cousin and as popular as a lungful of cancer. At that infamous bar mitzvah of my cousin Jay’s, people lined up to talk to Harry like he was the Pope. No one talked to Ira. No one ever talked to Ira. Jews are funny that way. They respect the law, but not those who enforce it. Ira was a joyless fuck. A good detective by all measures, but joyless.
He marched me to a stone bench in front of a row of four graves. A black granite headstone marked each of the graves. Each bore the name Einstein. Was there like a message in that, I wondered?
Standing by the bench was a hulk of a man with a shaven head and thick neck. It was the kind of neck with ripples in the back. He wore an ill-fitting gray suit that might as well have had SEARS CLOSEOUT embroidered down the sleeves. But he was shaped so that even a Sayville Row suit would have looked like a Halloween costume on him. Cop! Cop! Cop! The alarm bells rang in my head.
“This is Captain O’Connor,” Ira said.
“Christ, another donkey.”
Cousin Ira unhinged his arm, gave me a quick jab in my left kidney that left me on my knees and gagging on Sonya Einstein’s grave.
O’Connor crossed himself — you just gotta love the fucking Irish — knelt down beside me and said, “Pleasure to meet you, too. Sorry for your troubles.”
His smirk was broader than Griffin’s but had the same chilling effect. This guy meant business.
“You and me, Todd, we’re gonna be great friends,” he continued, his sour breath making me cringe. He held his left hand out to me. “Come on, lad, take it. It’s gonna be yours in a coupl’a months anyways.”
I looked back and saw Ira was fully prepared to administer his unique form of renal massage to my other kidney if I didn’t follow instructions. I held out my left hand. In it, O’Connor placed a NYPD detective’s shield.
“What the f—”
Ira landed his punch before I could get the — uck out of my mouth. Now I coughed up my breakfast onto Sonya’s grave.
“Jesus and his blessed mother!” O’Connor exclaimed in much the same way as Boyle might. “Show some respect for the dead.”
Managed to right myself and make it to the bench. O’Connor took the seat beside me.
“Now here’s the offer, lad. You’ll be one of us or you’ll be one of them,” he said, pointing to the Einsteins. “It’s a simple choice. I run the OCCB — do you know what that is, son?”
“Organized Crime Control Bureau.”
“Smart boy.” O’Connor patted my cheek. “As I was saying, I run the OCCB Task Force that oversees criminal enterprises where more than one gang of scumbags does business with another. You know, like how the wops and sheenies at JFK make nice with those shanty pricks you work for.”
“I don’t work for anyone but my Uncle—”
O’Connor slapped my face hard.
“Don’t take that attitude with me, lad. That fat cunt you call your uncle has been in my pocket for five years. So maybe when the boyos cut his heart out and feed it to him, they can lay him beside you.”
“Harry’s been an informant for years,” Ira chimed in. “And one way or another, he’s a dead man.”
“That’s right, Todd, your uncle’s fucked. But for you, there’s a chance.”
I held the shield up. “You call this a chance?”
“No, lad, I call it an only chance. And you’re lucky to have it. How you’ve managed all these years to avoid arrest is beyond me. Had you been arrested, let alone convicted of anything, you’d be fucked as well.”
“How’s that?”
“Because we’d be hard pressed to get you on the job with a record, shithead,” Ira said. “So we’re making this an elevator ride for you.”
“Pretty cryptic for a cop, cuz.”
“Then let me explain it to you. You’re one of us or one of them. It’s up or down with no change of direction.”
“What if I choose them?”
“It’s your prerogative, I suppose,” O’Connor admitted. “But then you’d be the second person in your family to commit suicide.”
“Suicide?”
“Exactly so,” O’Connor said. “Cause even if you don’t take the offer, we’ll let it leak that you’re working for us and you’ll be dead.”
“That’s murder, not suicide.”
“You’re splitting hairs, lad. Either way, you’ll be dead.”
“Nice operation you guys are running,” I sneered.
“You think that stone cold Griffin would give you an option? Come on, lad, use that — what’s that expression, Ira — your Yiddisher...”
“Yiddisher kupf,” Ira said. “Jewish head.”
“Yes, your Jewish smarts,” O’Connor translated.
Wasn’t being left with much of a choice. Nicky would’ve told them both to go fuck themselves and taken a swing at O’Connor. I wasn’t Nicky.
“I’ll do it.”
“Decisive, I like that,” O’Connor said, beaming like a new father. “Done at the speed of light. Appropriate, given our proximity.”
Somebody was bound to make an Einstein joke. Glad it wasn’t me.
“Do you like cheese steaks, Detective Rosen?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Ira will explain it to you on the ride back to your father’s house. Welcome aboard.” O’Connor patted my back. He knew I wasn’t about to shake his hand. He did, however, hold his left hand out to me. “The shield, son. You’ll have to earn it.”
Tossed it in my own puke and walked toward Ira’s car. Heard O’Connor laughing as I walked away.
“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think they will sing to me.”
Cover story. Cover girl. Women are the perfect camouflage. You could have thought up a thousand elaborate excuses for why I had to leave Brooklyn, why I had to quit Uncle Harry’s, why I had to temporarily part company with Boyle and the boyos, yet none would have done the trick like the mention of a woman. Let me tell you something, it’s men that are the bigger suckers for love. Women look for love. Men look for pussy and stumble onto love. And Christ, when we stumble it’s an endless fall. Who do you think misses their first loves more, men or women? If you say women, you’re a fool.