Rizzo’s Fire (10 page)

Thank the devil, he thought, for there remained one more murder to commit.

One more act of self-preservation.

He turned to leave the small, sad basement apartment.

As he stepped out onto the rain-swept, darkened streets of Brooklyn, he scanned his surroundings.

His next murder, his next per for mance, would be in a far more splendid setting. One so more fitting for a man of his position.

* * *

JOE RIZZO
sat bolt upright in bed, perspiration covering his body, the ghostly musty odor of the old Plymouth radio car distinct and sour in his nostrils, a guttural yelp escaping his throat.

He glanced quickly around the darkened room, saw the red digital alarm on the night table: 6:12 a.m.

His heart racing, Rizzo turned in the darkness toward Jennifer. His sudden, violent movement had awoken her, and he saw her reaching for the bedside lamp to switch it on.

“Joe?” she said. “Joe? Are you okay?”

Rizzo, breathing deeply, willing his heartbeat to slow, extended a gentle hand to his wife.

“Yeah,” he said, more breathlessly than he would have liked. “Yeah, hon, fine. Just a dream. Shut the light, Jen, go back to sleep.”

Jennifer sat up, glancing at the clock. “It’s okay,” she said, studying the near feral, yet bewildered look in his eyes. “I have to get up soon anyway.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked again, gently.

Rizzo ran a hand through his hair and managed a smile. He tossed the bedcovers back, away from his body, allowing the cool air of the room to touch his damp skin.

“Yeah,” he said. “Just a friggin’ dream, that’s all.”

Jennifer’s dark eyes reflected warmly in the bedside lighting.

“A
dream
?” she said. “Looks more like a nightmare to me.” Now she squinted, peering at him more closely.

“Was it
that
dream, Joe?” she asked, her tone neutral.

Rizzo nodded, using his T-shirt sleeve to clear sweat from his eyes.

“Yeah,” he said. Then after a moment, he shook his head in disbelief. “Can you imagine this? With all I’ve seen over the years? The dead babies, the dozens of murders, the burned corpses, the shooting vics, every goddamned thing. All of that, never a nightmare. But that one kid, that one poor kid, still haunting me after all these years.” He shook his head again. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

Jennifer shifted her body, facing him more directly.

“Well,” she said, rubbing gently at the knot of muscle in his powerful shoulder. “Like I’ve said before, you were just a kid yourself. Probably the same age she was. And you had just started on the force. An experience like that can stay with you.”

Rizzo reached to his night table for a Nicorette packet. “Yeah,” he said, tearing at the cellophane. “But still. Twenty-seven years later, almost. Enough already.”

Jennifer nodded, unsure of what else to say. “Well, it’s over now. Try to relax.”

Later, as he lay in bed listening to Jennifer’s shower hiss from the master bath, he replayed that long-ago day in his mind for the thousandth time.

It had been his very first morning tour, in the old Seventy-fifth Precinct, on the Brooklyn-Queens border. It was a Sunday morning, just past seven a.m., less than an hour remaining on the tour. His training officer, a twenty-year veteran who had harbored no ambition beyond a sector car patrol, had parked the Plymouth on a wooded, deserted stretch of ser vice road lying north of the Belt Parkway. The cop, Sonny Carusso, sat asleep behind the wheel. “Cooping,” the old-timers had called it back in those days.

Rizzo had watched the skies over Jamaica Bay dawn with a new April morning and now sat struggling with the Sunday
News
cross-word. Then suddenly, the old Motorola shortwave, hanging in silence from its bracket on the under dash of the Plymouth, crackled to life.

Magically, at the sound of the dispatch, Carusso’s eyes opened. With hooded lids, he glanced first at the radio, then to Rizzo.

“That’s us, kid,” he said, glancing at his wristwatch. “Bad fuckin’ timin’ to be pickin’ up a call.”

Rizzo reached out and took the hand mike, keying it and sending a terse “ten-four” back to dispatch.

Carusso sat up in his seat and slipped the car into gear, wiping the sleep from his eyes with his left hand.

“Write the time on the recorder sheet,” he told Rizzo. “Oh-seven oh-six. And the job location.”

Carusso accelerated harshly, the valve train in the battered Plymouth V-8 rattling with the sudden strain. He raced eastbound along the ser vice road, the car’s red dome light swirling, then slowed sharply, swinging a harsh U-turn and hurling the car onto the westbound entrance ramp of the Belt Parkway.

They reached the scene in moments. Rizzo noted the half dozen autos randomly scattered on the highway, blocking two of its three westbound lanes. Carusso wove the radio car deftly through the crowd of citizens who stood in the roadway, touching the horn rim and sporadically sounding short “wup-wup” siren bursts.

A body lay facedown on the concrete of the highway, straddling the entrance merge and right-hand traffic lanes.

Rizzo hurried to the body, that of a young woman—blond, naked, her body raked with bloody scrape marks. The back of her skull glistened with gray-red slime, the bone crushed, blood and exposed brain matter pulsating with each of her rapid heartbeats, welling from the skull and flowing in meandering rivulets across the pale skin of her neck and back.

Rizzo bent to one knee, his throat constricting, his own heart rate rapidly increasing. He tentatively reached out a hand, unable to bring himself to touch the naked flesh.

“It wasn’t my fault!” he heard someone say, and Rizzo turned to look over his shoulder. A man, about thirty, tall, hair disheveled by the wind blowing across the highway, was imploring Carusso. “She ran out right in front of me, right out of the bushes, right in front of my car. I swerved, I tried to miss her, but . . . but . . . I couldn’t.”

Carusso took the man by the arm, leading him toward the shoulder of the roadway.

“Joe,” he said as he walked, “get on the horn . . . see what’s holdin’ the ambulance. Hurry up.”

Rizzo stood on weakened legs, turning and running back to the radio car. Frantically, he radioed for expedited medical backup. Then he went back to the girl, again kneeling at her side.

During his four years of ser vice as an Army M.P., Rizzo had seen some ugly things, things he preferred not to think about. But never had he seen anything like this. As he looked down at the woman, the girl, an eerie, dry hollow rattle suddenly sounded from deep within her chest cavity. Simultaneously, the pulsating blood from the head wound went oddly still. It began to pool within the skull, filling the depth of the depression and again spilling slowly onto the already bloodstained pavement.

Rizzo glanced up over his shoulder at Carusso, now standing above and behind him. “She just died,” he heard the older cop say. “It’s over.” Rizzo stood slowly, his hands trembling, his breath coming in short, shallow gasps.

Carusso took him by the arm.

“Hey, kid,” he said softly. “Get hold of yourself. Stiffen up. Go see if there’s anything in the trunk. We gotta cover her up a little, give her some dignity. She don’t need to have her ass out here on display. Go ahead. Go find somethin’.”

Later, Rizzo examined the abandoned car hidden in the bushes off the side of the highway. It was an old Dodge, the engine still hot, ticking in the April morning air with an eerie cadence.

The woman had been stripped naked, sexually assaulted, and savagely beaten in her own car. The medical examiner would later determine there had been at least two assailants involved. At some point, the girl had broken free, terrified and panicked, running blindly from the car and into the path of oncoming highway traffic. There she had been struck with violent force and dragged under a car, then ultimately thrown free from its undercarriage. The terrified driver, hearing her body thump and thrash beneath the floorboard, swerved and skidded off the roadway onto the grass shoulder.

The responding detectives examined the Dodge, but it had yielded no usable clues. The case remained open, no arrest had ever been made.

Now, nearly twenty-seven years later, Joe Rizzo lay on his bed staring at the ceiling.

The dream came periodically. Often, at first, then once or twice a year. Lately, he had gone nearly two years without having it, and Rizzo thought he knew what had triggered it this time.

He swung his legs off the bed and sighed, sitting up and rubbing at his face.

The dream was always the same. They were alone on the highway. Just Rizzo and the body. No vehicles, no Carusso, no citizens. The cold wind blew over the desolate scene, chilling him.

The girl, scarred, battered, bloody, and naked against the dirty, cold concrete of the roadway, gave her death rattle. The pulsating blood went still, tranquil, inanimate.

Rizzo held a soiled blanket. Gently, he covered the girl’s naked body and face. As he stood on the empty highway, the wind rushing in his ears, gazing down at the covered corpse, his eyes began to tear.

Then, slowly, the blanket began to stir. The young woman pulled the blanket from her face with a bloodied, trembling hand. Rizzo stepped back suddenly, enveloped in a fear that overwhelmed his grief. He stared at the pretty young face, blond hair wisping lightly in the breeze against the skin, the eyes now wide open. Blue, sharp, piercing. The pale lips parted, and in a throaty, wet voice, the young woman pleaded to him. “Help me,” she said.

Terrified, he backed farther away, his bowels going loose with fear.

“Help me,” she whispered, desperation and chilling terror in her eyes. “You’re a cop. Help me. Please.”

Then he would awaken, violently sweating, arms flailing, panic-stricken. Time after time.

Rizzo sighed. “And that,” he said aloud, “is the reality of it.”

“The reality of what?” he heard suddenly. Startled, he turned quickly. Jennifer, rubbing at her hair with a fluffy towel, stood naked in the bathroom doorway.

“The reality of being a cop,” he said to her. Rizzo shook his head sadly. “That’s what Carol doesn’t get. What she doesn’t understand.”

Jennifer crossed the room, sitting beside him on the bed.

“Is this about that damn nightmare of yours?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yeah. That’s what triggered it this time, this business with Carol going on the cops. She figures she’ll be a big hero, Charlie’s friggin’ Angel, riding to the rescue in her blue-and-white. Then she’ll spend the next twenty years learning the truth. How you wind up kneeling on the road watchin’ some kid die, with some old cop tellin’ you to note the time. For the incident report. Note the time and go get a goddamned blanket.”

Jennifer laid a hand on his shoulder but remained silent. Rizzo glanced at her face, saw the tension in her jaw.

Forcing a smile to his lips, he leaned over and gently kissed her cheek, laying a soft hand on her thigh.

“We’ll handle it, Jen,” he said. “Believe me, we’ll handle it.”

She nodded, still silent, grim-faced.

He nuzzled her ear. “We need to have a date soon, hon,” he said, lightening his tone, willing his body to relax. “Okay?” he asked.

“A date?” she said, a small smile forming. “You mean, like when we were in high school?”

Rizzo allowed his own smile to broaden. “Well,” he said, “considering you’re sitting next to me naked on the bed, I figure more of a college-type date. Remember?”

Jennifer brushed his hand from her thigh and stood. She removed the towel from her head, shaking her dark hair free.

“Yes, of course I remember. But relax, sailor, let’s not start ‘dating’ just now. I’ve got to get to work.”

“Well, then, get that nice-lookin’ ass out of my face or you may be late for homeroom.”

Jennifer laughed, her tension nearly gone, and spun from his exaggerated efforts to grab her, disappearing back into the bathroom and slamming the door behind her.

Later, as they sipped coffee at the kitchen table, Rizzo now in his bathrobe, Jennifer dressed and ready for work, he saw the tension return to her face.

“Can we really do it, Joe?” she asked. “Can we really handle this with Carol?”

He smiled, trying to convey a confidence he didn’t feel.

“Sure we can,” he said. “This expedited hiring they announced, that shook me a little, I admit. I figured we had more time. But . . . I got a plan.”

Jennifer glanced at the wall clock. “I have a few minutes. Tell me. What’s your plan?”

He shrugged. “Well, it’s nothing new. What we’ve always done with the girls. All three of ’em. The truth. My plan is the simple, friggin’ truth.”

She leaned in over the table, closer to him. “Meaning what?” she asked.

“The Daily thing, for one,” Rizzo said. “That whole mess me and Mike stumbled into. The tape I got stashed in the basement. The whole fuckin’ mess. And that other business, the internal affairs thing that drunk Morelli got me jammed up with. That whole rotten ball of crap. I’m gonna tell Carol about it. All of it. How I.A.D. was squeezin’ me to rat out Morelli; how I played Councilman Daily to use his juice to squash it. I’m gonna tell her how me and Mike are sittin’ on that tape—withholding evidence, riskin’ an accessory charge, all because we couldn’t trust anybody, couldn’t go to the bosses with any confidence. And let’s face it, to grease our own wheels, too. To get Mike to the Plaza, get Cil her gold shield, get me some pensionable overtime. I’m gonna tell her that to fight them, to do what
she
would consider the ‘right’ thing, we had to
become
them, no great difference between us. Not in Carol’s world, anyway. I’m gonna lay it all out for her. Make her see that her daddy’s not some knight on a white horse. No, Daddy’s just a street fighter, fighting both sides of every battle. And in the real world,
that’s
what makes a good cop. The fire to fight the fire and still survive. It’s not right, it’s not wrong. It just
is
.”

Now Rizzo paused, allowing himself to calm down. “The fire to fight the fire,” he repeated. “That and the blanket. Always the blanket.”