Love or Honor (31 page)

He walked back to Waterside and sat in the plaza. He couldn't think of anything but that radio car. He wished he had his memo books; they were stored at his mother's house. Everything a cop did had to be recorded in the little book he carried in his pocket, every minute of the tour accounted for, including “personals”—a lunch break, a trip to the bathroom. “The memo book either saves you or hangs you,” Chris was told, early on, and he'd been scrupulous, in the beginning, about writing down not only the time of his lunch break but the exact spot: Hal's Confectionery, Sam's, the Bow-Wow Restaurant on Cross Bay Boulevard. He made note of the weather: “Clear/Cold. Man on lawn face down, possible stroke.” At Rockaway, he'd had time to write at some length that he'd “warned and admonished” a bunch of surfers attempting to surf off a restricted beach. When he got busier, his memos got terser. At the 4-oh, he'd just scribbled “Homocide,” not bothering to check his spelling.

He'd liked the routine of the memo book, the structure of the day at the 4-oh. When the weather was good and there wasn't a problem with demonstrators or snipers, morning roll call was held outside. All the guys were in spanking clean blue; you put your arm out and touched the other guy's shoulder, Dress Right! and then snapped to, while the sergeant came around to inspect. As careless as he may have been about some things, Chris was always careful about his appearance. He always made sure his buttons were sewn on tight, his uniform crisply pressed, his gun cleaned, his shoes shined. Actually, his mother looked after the buttons, the shirt, and the uniform-pressing. Chris took care of the gun, and he used the machine at the precinct to shine his shoes. All you had to do was apply the polish, then turn on the switch; the machine did the work. Each cop who used the gadget kicked in five dollars a month.

He couldn't remember now why he'd wanted to get out of uniform. Why, in God's name, had he ever wanted to? Being in the blue uniform of the New York Police Department was the greatest feeling in the world. When you wore that uniform, the world knew who you were. You knew who you were. The old Jewish man at his tiny button-and-thread shop always gave him tea with lemon and a piece of cheese sandwich on dark rye bread. “I made half for you and half for me,” the old man would say. He had a concentration-camp number on his arm.

When you were in uniform, you felt you could handle anything. Even in those days, with no bulletproof vests, he and Phil knew they could handle anything. They were working midnight to eight when they had a call, a woman reporting shots fired into her window. They went up, found an elderly Irish woman, lived alone, scared to death. She showed them three holes in her bedroom window.

“Those are bullet holes, no doubt about it,” Phil said.

They could tell by the angles of the cracks in the glass where the bullets had come from; it looked like a straight-on shot, from someplace exactly opposite, on the same level. The building was U-shaped; there was an apartment across the courtyard, facing hers. They went over to that apartment, knocked; they had their guns out. Nobody answered; there were no sounds. Three o'clock in the morning. They holstered their guns and turned away. The door opened. They turned back. A man was standing in the doorway, pointing an automatic. If they went for their guns, he would shoot. They talked as they inched forward. Phil grabbed the guy's gun hand as Chris pulled his gun and put it to the guy's head. Phil was trying to push the guy's arm down, get the gun pointed to the floor, as the door gave way and they all fell into the apartment. The door slammed shut. It was pitch black. Three men with two guns, grappling.

The guy was yelling, “I'll kill you!”

Chris was yelling, “Drop the gun! Drop the gun or I'll shoot!”

Phil was thinking, “I wonder if Chris knows where my head is.”

Finger by finger, Phil pried the guy's gun from his hand. The gun dropped. Chris found the light. The whole thing took ninety seconds, start to finish.

When you were in uniform, you knew exactly what you were supposed to do. You had to check the glass: At the beginning and end of your tour, you walked around and made sure no windows of the stores on your post were broken. When you were in uniform, you knew where you belonged. Where did Chris belong now? Not at Andy Glover's funeral. Too many cops there. Policemen in white gloves had lined two blocks along 145th Street, a hushed blue sea, as Andy's coffin, covered with the white, green, and blue NYPD flag, was borne into the Convent Avenue Baptist Church. Where did Chris belong now? Not at Carlo Gambino's funeral, when the old don had a Mass of the Resurrection. Same reason: too many cops there.

The lights in the plaza had come on; there were no people around. A security guard making rounds came over to Chris. “I live here,” Chris said.

“Okay, have a good evening,” the guard said.

Chris went up to his apartment. He stood at the window, looking down at the black water. He had talked down suicides. You had to be careful, if they were on a roof, not to get too close, or they might take you over the edge with them. You talked them down, then you called a priest. It didn't matter whether they were Catholic or not, you called a priest anyway. The longer you talked, the less chance they'd jump. “Nothing can be that bad,” Chris would say. “No matter what's the matter, it can't be that bad.” When he'd gone on a domestic-dispute call, the woman was standing there with a black eye, then she begged him not to lock the guy up. So Chris had let him off with a lecture. “Listen! I don't want to have to come back here again. If I get another call, I am going to come back and beat the living shit out of you.” Cops were allowed to talk like that, in those days. “Settle down, now! You have a wonderful wife and family. You have your health and a place to live. Enjoy your life—it's simple.”

Now Chris knew it wasn't simple. Something
could
be that bad—so bad that there seemed no other way out. Judas had thought so.

He didn't seriously consider it for himself, though. That was an ultimate law he couldn't break. He just walked over to the kitchen and poured himself a drink. He'd been drinking, all along, because it was part of the life-style. Now he was drinking because it eased the pain and because he just felt like drinking.

Against all the rules, he met Phil.

They'd talked on the phone often, since Phil had been back in New York, but getting together had been out of the question, too risky for both of them. As an FBI agent, Phil didn't wear a uniform, but Chris thought Phil looked as though he were always in uniform. It wasn't just the dark suit and the tie; it was his whole bearing, his straight-arrow look. He looked so much like a lawman that some people thought he never laughed. Chris knew better, and he'd missed Phil a lot. The last thing Chris needed was for somebody to see him talking to a fed. Hanging around with a wiseguy wouldn't have been a good career move for Phil, either.

Chris phoned Phil at his office.

“How are you doing? How's it going?” Phil asked.

“Fine,” Chris said. “I've got to see you.”

They met at the safest place Chris could think of, a tiny, out-of-the-way beach in Queens. It wasn't much of a beach, just a strip of dark-brown sand on an inlet off Jamaica Bay. Planes taking off and landing at Kennedy Airport, less than a mile away, made a racket, and the smell of jet fuel hung in the air. Chris had been going to Rockaway for thirty years, so he knew about the little beach. He used to drag-race on Cross Bay Boulevard, in a souped-up Chevy, starting at the Bow-Wow restaurant and ending at the channel bridge, a quarter of a mile with no traffic lights. You could see the channel bridge from the beach. Partly because it was so small and secluded and basically unappealing, Chris and Phil were the only people there.

“Hey, you look great,” Chris said. “How's it going?”

“You look terrible,” Phil said. “What's the matter with you? What's wrong?”

“Oh, nothing,” Chris said. “I just wanted to see you, keep in touch, you know? How's the family?”

“Fine,” Phil said. “Everybody's fine.” He was appalled at the way Chris looked. He saw that Chris had gained weight, yet his face had a strained, tight look, and he looked as though he were drinking a lot. He had a bleak expression in his eyes that Phil had never seen.

“Come on, sit down,” Chris said. He motioned to a piece of broken log, embedded in the dirty sand. “This is my beach chair. I found this place a long time ago. It's a good place to sit and talk.”

“Great, let's talk,” Phil said.

Chris sat at one end of the log, Phil at the other. Chris was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt, but Phil was in his suit and tie. Phil figured he must look ridiculous, sitting there like that, but he was never comfortable taking off his jacket or loosening his tie. He opened a paper bag he'd brought and took out two cans of diet cola.

Chris took the can. “Hey, can I keep it this time, Dad?”

Phil laughed. “But I never said it was corruption to take the can of soda. I just said it was better …”

Chris chimed in. “Better not to take anything at all, that isn't paid for.”

Chris took a swig of his soda.

“You were a better cop than I was,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” Phil demanded. “You were a terrific cop. At least, my mother said so.”

Chris brightened a little. They'd always said their mothers were stereotypes of Greek mothers, who lived only for their children, and they'd made up a joke. “What's a Greek mother? A Greek mother is a mother who, if her son cuts her heart out one day because he needs money and he's going to take it out and sell it, she calls to him as he's running out the door, ‘Be careful, don't trip and fall!'”

“How's your mother?” Chris asked.

“She's fine,” Phil said. “She's still down in south Jersey, that little place with the big garden. How's yours?”

“She's fine, I think,” Chris said. “I haven't seen her for a while.”

Phil knew in general what Chris was doing, and he knew from looking at him, and hearing what Chris was saying, and what Chris wasn't saying, that something was very wrong. But he didn't want to press. Better to let him say whatever he's got to say when he's ready, he thought. So Phil talked about his family—his son, who was a Scout, all excited about going to summer camp; his wife, Judy, who'd gone back to nursing, part-time.

“How's your wife?” Phil asked.

“She's fine, I think,” Chris said.

Chris stared out at the murky water. Two stray seagulls were skimming near the edge of the water.

“I wish we could go back,” Chris said. “I wish we were back in the radio car again. I've been thinking about those days, a lot, and about the Academy.”

“Well, those were the good old days,” Phil said. Looking at Chris, he thought maybe it would help to reminisce. So he talked about old times. As a cadet at the Academy, Phil had been sent out for a couple of days to direct traffic. He'd been sent to what he thought must have been the busiest intersection in the world, Times Square, where Broadway and Seventh Avenue intersect. He was petrified. He was just standing there shaking, traffic whizzing all around him, when a cop approached.

“What are you doing here?” the cop asked.

“I'm supposed to be here, sir,” Phil said.

“Don't call me ‘sir,'” the cop said. “I'm not your superior; my badge is the same color as yours.” He pointed to the traffic signal. “See that light? That is a traffic light. It turns red and it turns green. Now, this may come as a shock to you, but that light is going to turn red, then green, then red again, all day, whether you're standing here or not. And people are going to stop and go and stop and go whether you're standing here or not. So take it easy. Relax.”

“Yes sir, I will,” Phil said.

Chris laughed. “They sent me to Eighth Avenue and Forty-second Street,” he said. “A terrible corner. Sink or swim. I'll never forget it. I didn't know how to talk with the whistle in my mouth, and a truck was coming through the intersection, and I hollered at him, and the whistle went flying out of my mouth and the truck ran right over it.

“Then a woman comes running up to me, and she's hollering, ‘Officer, Officer, there's a building collapsed over on Ninth Avenue!' I just looked at her, because my sergeant had said to me, ‘Don't get involved in anything, kid. Just do traffic and don't get involved.' So I said to her, ‘You better call the police.' She says, ‘But you're a policeman, aren't you?' And I said, ‘Yes, I'm a policeman, but please, lady, call
another
policeman.' And I gave her my dime, from my memo book.”

Chris laughed again, then stopped abruptly. He squeezed the empty soda can between his hands, making crackling sounds.

“How long have you been under, Butch?” Phil asked.

“Four years and two months,” Chris said. “They call me ‘Curley.'”

“Well, my God, that's too long,” Phil said. “That's way too long! A couple of years, okay, but after that it takes too much of a toll. I can see it's taking a toll. It's time to bow out, Butch. Pull the plug.”

“No, not yet,” Chris said. “I've almost got one guy right where I want him. I have to stay in a while longer, because it's taken me a long time to get to this point, and nobody else could get to this point.”

“Look, if you got hit by a car tomorrow, there'd be somebody to take your place,” Phil said bluntly. “There are other cops. There are even other Greek cops!”

“You don't understand,” Chris said wearily.

“I understand that you have been in this job about twice as long as you ought to be,” Phil said. “You look god-awful. You can't keep on like this, Butch.”

Chris laughed shortly. “The word ‘can't' isn't in my vocabulary,” he said. “At least, somebody once told me that.”