Queens Noir (34 page)

Finally, the cashier got her act together. She handed him
the transaction slip and her pen. He scribbled Gerry Adams in
the signature space. In the past, Frankie had passed himself off
as Billy Clinton, Charles Prince, and Johnny Depp. The cashier counted out crisp currency and gave it to him along with
a command to have a nice day. Her name tag read Rochelle.

"Thanks, Rochelle," he said, and asked her for the receipt.
She stared vacantly at the piece of paper. "Oh. Sure," she said,
then handed it to him and wandered off.

Frankie glanced around the customer service desk. What
a misnomer. The three clerks behind the counter were doing
anything but servicing customers. One was chatting on her
cell phone with her back to the store. Another was deep in
thought, staring intently into the middle distance. The third
mindlessly folded and refolded the same article of clothing.
He spied a roll of thermal cash register tape sitting out on the
counter. Somebody had probably started changing the tape and then forgot about it midstream. Nobody was paying any
attention to him, so he swiped the tape and tucked it into the
white plastic bag. He was sure he could find some use for it.

He hopped into his black SUV and merged into traffic
on Northern Boulevard. He headed toward his next stop
near the Queens Center Mall. Most of his NYPD colleagues
worked extra jobs on their RDOS. Having regular days off
gave them an opportunity to land good gigs like guarding one
of the Commerce Bank branches. Stand there for eight hours
in uniform, flirting with the tellers. Nice.

Frankie sighed and looked at the list his wife had made for
him. This was how he spent his RDOS-running from store
to store. He thought about his wife and their two kids and
sighed again. For the millionth time, he questioned the way
his life was unfolding. Shouldn't he try to land a private-pay
job with a bank for his days off? Or maybe with a store? He
grimaced. It was only July, but the kids would need new school
supplies soon, and then Christmas ... Always something.

He pulled into the left lane on Queens Boulevard and
waited for the light to change. One of the guys in the livery
cab that sailed through the light on his right looked familiar,
but he couldn't be sure. He tried to think who it might be.
The memory came to him just as he pulled into the Marshall's
parking lot.

On his first day in the Police Academy, Frankie had buddied up with three other recruits: Thompson, Edwards, and
... the third guy's name escaped him. The group had coffee
before classes, studied together, and ate lunch in a diner two
blocks from the Academy. The man in the black car reminded
Frankie of the last member of the Fearsome Foursome. (How
young they'd been! That name had sounded so cool at the
time.) He was a lanky, raw-boned shit-kicker from the hills of West Virginia. The guy had heard an ad for the NYPD on
his short-wave radio and had spent a day driving northeast
to take the test. Everybody thought he was stupid because of
his hillbilly accent, but Frankie copied his homework every
chance he got.

Williams-that was his name. Frankie must have been the
first Mexican-American Williams had ever seen. Right off the
bat, the guy made a remark about Frankie's nose. Frankie, who
thought his nose was regal, like the profile on the statue of an
Aztec warrior, was slightly insulted. "What do you know?" he'd
asked Williams. "Your last girlfriend was probably a sheep."

The other guys chuckled, but Williams took it seriously.
"We never had no sheep in our family," he said. "I had an uncle once, kept goats. He was pretty tight with one of themcalled her Priscilla." He looked puzzled when the other three
recruits doubled over with laughter. He must have figured he'd
made a slight miscalculation because he tried to backtrack. "I
don't think he was improper with Priscilla or nothin'," he protested. "They was just real good companions."

Frankie could hardly catch his breath, he couldn't stop
laughing. "They never got married, huh, Williams? Your uncle
and his goat?"

"That's disgusting," Williams said. He refused to speak to
the other three for the rest of the day.

One of the guys found out later that Williams had a degree from some Bible college, but it was too late. He'd earned
himself the nickname Officer Goatfucker. Nobody called him
that anymore. He was a captain now, working out of the 115th
Precinct. Now they called him Captain Goatfucker. Behind his
back, of course.

Frankie smiled, thinking about the old days. Fifteen years
had slipped by. He sometimes regretted that he didn't have more to show for the time besides a few gray hairs and occasional heartburn. He'd been so naive when he first came on
the job. Thought everything was the way they showed it on
TV. Boy, did he know better now.

Frankie pushed open the heavy entrance door to the store
and made a beeline for the customer service desk. "I'd like to
return this merchandise," he told the clerk, and handed her a
receipt. This one's name tag said Shaquanna.

She gazed blankly at the clothing he pulled out of his
shopping bag and lifted her electronic scanner. She passed it
over the tags and pressed a key on her register. "A hundred
and eighty-six dollars. Would you like a store credit?"

"Cash, please," he said.

She ripped both layers of register tape off and held them
together with her thumb and forefinger. Her nails were painted
tomato-red and had rhinestones embedded in the polish. "Fill
out your name and address and sign on the line here." He
scrawled on the paper and handed it back. The clerk pressed a
button on the register with her long, fake fingernail. There was
a noise like a lawnmower starting, then everything went dark.

Silence enveloped the store for a long moment, then
shouts erupted. Frankie's first thought was another terrorist
attack. He'd spent 9/11 pulling people out of the World Trade
Center. A part of him had been on edge ever since, always
halfway expecting a repeat performance. His heart raced into
fourth gear. He whipped out his phone, praying that the cell
towers were still relaying calls.

"Seven-three Precinct," a voice snarled. Frankie never
thought he'd be so glad to hear PAA Malloy's nasal twang.

"Hernandez here. What's going on?"

"I'm busy. Whadaya mean, what's going on? With what?"

Lovable old Malloy, the best police administrative aide in
the department. Frankie gritted his teeth. "With the lights.
The lights are out. Is it citywide? What's happening?"

"I don't know nothin' about no lights out. We got plentya
light here. Whyn't ya come in and use the lights here? Maybe
you could see to make out the reports right once in a while.
Say, is that it? I gotta get back. Somebody has to do some work
around here."

"Yeah," Frankie said, "that's it." He pressed the End Call
button.

His heart downshifted to third gear. The chaos that had
threatened to erupt calmed to a dull murmur. Late afternoon
light streamed in through the front windows, diluted by the
grime. Drawn like moths to a flame, shoppers swarmed in
the sunlight, their intended purchases clutched uncertainly
to their chests. Store security was already in action. Uniformed guards gathered with the store managers near the
exits to make sure no one took advantage of the power outage to sneak merchandise past the electronic monitoring
pedestals.

Electric signs on businesses across Queens Boulevard were
illuminated, so maybe it was just the store's system that had
given up the ghost. That's why the PAA at Frankie's Brooklyn
precinct didn't know anything about it. He smiled grimly, gently chiding himself for jumping the gun and heading right to
thoughts of disaster. He turned back to the cashier. "Uh, what
about my refund?"

She looked at the cash register without focusing. "It won't
open without electricity," she said.

"I understand that," he said slowly, patiently. "How can I
get my money?"

"We'll mail it to you, I guess." She consulted the tape where he'd identified himself as Colonel Parker, with an address at 12 Finger Lickin Lane in Fried Chicken, Kentucky.
"You're from Kentucky?" She squinted uncertainly. "They got
mail there, I guess. We'll send it to you."

A knot formed in Frankie's stomach. "I need it now," he
said.

She shrugged. "I can't give it to you. Hey, I got kids. I
better pick them up from day care." She shuffled off, leaving
Frankie standing at the customer service counter by himself
in the dark.

Fuck! Who would have thought giving a wrong name and
address would come back to bite him in the ass? No cop in his
right mind handed over that information to strangers. Now he
was out the money and the merchandise. He glanced behind
the counter, but efficient old Shaquanna had hustled his returns to the back, so he couldn't even take them with him.

The crowd thinned rapidly as people poured outside. Maybe
he could find the manager. And then what? The guy would
grab the money out of petty cash and hand it over to Colonel
Parker? Shit. Frankie cursed himself silently. He'd just fucked
himself out of almost two hundred dollars.

He got back into his family-sized gas-guzzler and took off
to finish the rest of the errands on his wife's list. Her family came from the Mexican state of Puebla. Frankie's family,
which hailed from the West Coast state of Jalisco, secretly
looked down their regal noses on Puebla, which they considered to be the asshole of Mexico. (When you looked at Puebla
on the map, it really did look like the end of the long intestine,
which made Oaxaca and Chiapas and a few other states the
shit end of the country, as far as Frankie's parents were concerned.) Frankie himself didn't really have an opinion, having
never spent more than a few school vacations in any part of Mexico. All he knew about the people from Puebla was that
the food they cooked in the local Woodside restaurants wasn't
as good as his mother's.

He had to admit that his wife came from a long line of
savvy politicians. In Mexico, that meant that they stole with
both hands and lied out of both sides of their mouths. Some
of the family had emigrated to the States, where they continued the family tradition by becoming involved in New Jersey
politics.

Maria was a perfect blend of North and South. She ran
their little tribe with an iron fist, the way the matriarchs in her
lineage always had. And she was clever, much like the rest of
her family members. She had a number of friends, but the relationships were always transactional, rather than emotional.
Maria had no interest in socializing with anyone who didn't
trade in the currency of favors. If she couldn't get something on
somebody, she wasn't interested in pursuing the friendship.

Of course, she had plenty to hold over Frankie's head. She
was also bewitching. She would dazzle you with her smile and
enchant you with her personality. Once in a while, Frankie
caught glimpses beneath Maria's charming veneer to a heart
of stone. Other times, he thought he must be imagining things
and that she was the best thing to ever happen to him. Occasionally, he thought that if it weren't for Maria, he could have
had a much different-probably better-kind of life.

He followed the directions on his list, the chores taking
him out to Nassau County, on Long Island but close to the
Queens border. He listened intently to the radio, changing
stations to catch any news about the power situation. The
oppressive heatwave that was plaguing the New York Metropolitan Area was taking its toll. A blackout was focused
mostly in western Queens, caused by excessive demands on the power grid. Too many people in illegal apartments running extra air conditioners. Astoria, Woodside, and Sunnyside bore the brunt. But, the announcer said, residents in that
area shouldn't feel too badly-people in other areas of the city
were also suffering.

Frankie felt much better hearing that. Wow, other people
were suffering too. Yippee.

His wife called his cell to report that their lights were still
on, but their neighbors' houses had lost power. "Thanks for
the update," he said. "Does that mean you're gonna cook dinner?" She hung up on him.

On his return trip to Queens, he was going against rushhour traffic, but the cars still crawled. He decided to stop on
the other side of Woodside before heading home. He owed
TIa Alba a visit. He lived only a five-minute drive away, but
didn't see her as much as she wanted. He parked outside Sean
Og's, the Irish pub on Woodside Avenue. It was 8:30 and the
darkness was settling in slowly. He loved the way the day took
its time ending during the height of summer. The extended
daylight brought back memories of riding his bike at dusk and
playing ball with the other children. Remote, simpler times,
when the most important decisions he made revolved around
which kids to torment for the day.

Most of the businesses on Woodside Avenue were dark,
but a few had lights. Weird how the power grid worked, skipping over certain places but hitting the ones next door. He
briefly wondered whether someone got paid off to keep the
lights on in certain places. Nah. That was too paranoid, even
for him.

The big wooden sign on the side of Sean Og's read Drinking Consultant. He wondered about that every time he saw it.
He could picture the scene inside: A guy walks up to the bar, says, "I want to consult you about drinking." The bartender
says, "Yes, sir, what would you like to drink?" Frankie wondered if the consultation cost fifty bucks an hour, like a shrink.
Probably, he thought, if you downed the booze fast enough.
Then again, you'd probably wind up lying down in Sean Og's,
just like at a shrink's, you drank enough. He remembered
when the place was some other Irish joint where you could
bet on soccer games and horse races. Of course, the son of a
bitch running the place taped the soccer games and got suckers to bet on the losing team when he rebroadcast them, but
it only took a couple of losses for people to wise up. The guy
went out of business years ago, go figure.