Crooked (9 page)

C h a p t e r                           1 2

 
T
here were a thousand things to do back at Trident Mutual. Nicasia’s desk was surrounded by a wall of paper: reports, invoices, field dispatches. She couldn’t walk away from her desk for ten minutes without an equal number of e-mails filling her in-box. The light on her phone, a demanding red taskmaster, would be staring expectantly at her. But Nicasia couldn’t bring herself to go back to the office.

So she made her way to her refuge. A cab dropped her off at 23rd Street and the West Side Highway in a little parking lot for Basketball City. It was part of the Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex, an array of four piers and warehouses that had been turned into a driving range, bowling alley, pool, track, marina, and brew pub—a vast and hospitable improvement over the car impoundment lot it had once been.

Twenty minutes after arriving and dressed in a neoprene dry suit, knit cap, and life vest, she captained her kayak out into the formidable Hudson River.

New Yorkers, as a rule, are suspicious of their rivers. For a century or more, the citizenry has been fenced off, blocked from approaching the water by industry and shipping. During recent decades, concerted efforts to provide access to the Hudson, in particular, had successfully opened a series of connecting parks and public spaces along Manhattan’s West Side. Yet the stigma of a polluted, putrid waterway was entrenched in the public’s mind, even though the Hudson’s water quality had been much improved.

Nicasia was pleased that most New Yorkers didn’t come down to her sanctuary—that was part of what made it special. Uncrowded. Views of the city from near water level provided a valuable perspective. True, a most impressive portion of New York’s midtown skyline loomed above, an expanse of skyscrapers and urban hum that made her feel small. Yet at the same time, she had the river itself to provide counterpoint. She could feel the Hudson’s current rippling beneath her, feel its tide pushing or pulling the kayak. The forces were a visceral reminder that the river had been there before the mountain of brick, before the skeletons of steel, before the pinnacles of the Empire State and Chrysler buildings. The city was, after all, only another phase of the landscape, like a canyon or mountain, and would one day be gone, wiped clean by planetary forces profoundly superior to frail human architecture and engineering. But the river would remain. For Nicasia, being in her kayak on the Hudson was something like holding hands with God, her business facade and worries trailing off in the current behind her as she paddled along Manhattan’s bulkheads.

But the river represented so many things to her. Including the time she had been saved from a river by Nicholas. Including isolation and strength.

There was something about Barney’s quiet self-assurance that had struck her when he came to Trident Mutual. She remembered the exact moment they’d met, when Nicholas brought Barney into her office, when his hand met hers, when she looked into those eyes, deep blue pools in the ocean. He was self-assured and yet utterly unassuming. As he sat in front of her desk, casually and yet concisely expounding on the vulnerability of everything from museums to private collections, he picked up an antique door lock assembly from her shelf. With a dime from his pocket, he completely disassembled and reassembled the lock as he spoke.

He had a certain wisdom that was hard to fathom, and thus drew her to him—like a river. There were depths and currents and dynamics there that she couldn’t see, couldn’t touch, but felt just the same. The currents of his emotion and soul were strong, and they could be intimidating. And yet she felt soothed by his presence, comforted, unafraid to lower her guard. Like the currents on the Hudson, his strength carried her, supported her. He was open and honest of heart as no man she’d ever met. But not as open about his past.

Since he’d been gone, the river was the only place where she could feel close to him. But after meeting with Nicholas, knowing that Barney was probably alive, the river provided little solace or quietude.

Why would Barney purposely pretend he was dead? Was he not what he appeared to be? She knew more about him than he knew, but was there something else in his past that had caused him to perpetrate this charade? Was it something she had done?

Her heart was breaking. Deep down she knew the truth was probably that Barney had gone back to stealing.

She recalled a line from a book she’d read in college, by Henry Fielding.

There is perhaps no surer mark of folly than to attempt to correct the natural infirmities of those we love.

She’d remembered that line once before. There was a man who had led a life as a liar and con man, and she’d fallen in love with him thinking he would change. That man had been Nicholas.

Had she been foolish to think Barney—a thief—could have reformed?

The questions repeated themselves in a rhythm, like that of her hips and torso dipping the paddle into the dark swirling water.

C h a p t e r                           1 3

 
B
y four
AM
on their first night of work, Sam and Joey Pazzo had smoked a mess of Salems and completed two borings.

Park Police dropped by wanting to know what they were up to. Barney stepped to the stage. He explained that they were doing tests for the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. He showed them a forged letter he’d typed on TBTA stationery authorizing the work. When he worked for the city, he’d collected a wide variety of official stationery, even from the office of the mayor. Officially, the land belonged to the Parks Department, but Barney also showed the officers a doctored tax map which showed that they were drilling outside of Parks Department property, within the right-of-way for the Triborough Bridge, which loomed overhead. Why were they drilling at night? Tidal fluctuation, of course. They were trying to determine the relationship between aquifer and tidal fluctuations as they related to the level of hydrostatic pressure and potential resultant differential settlement on soils surrounding the bridge spread footings. The cops didn’t know what he was talking about, so they left, satisfied Barney was on the level.

By that time, the Pazzo brothers were packing up for the night. Joey was lifting steel casing sections onto the truck, a rig that looked like a roll-away oil well. Sam got angry with a reluctant bolt that locked the derrick upright.

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, and fuck!” Sam was hanging from the wrench.

Barney leaned on the rig, hands deep in his pockets. “Locking nut stuck?”

Sam turned toward the light of a lantern and squinted with disgust. His jumpsuit was smeared with grease, mud, and white bentonite dust.

“Whadda you think? Some fucker who had this rig before us stripped the fucking nut. Now it’s stuck tighter than a fucking coconut in a monkey’s ass.” Sam dropped to the ground, grabbed a pipe wrench, and pounded the locking nut, shouting foul expletives aplenty.

Joey came to his brother’s aid with a drilling rod, the hollow end of which they slipped onto the end of the wrench for extra torque. Like a couple of acrobats preparing a springboard stunt, they stood on the extended pipe end, arm in arm. The nut gave suddenly and the Pazzo brothers tumbled to the ground, cursing.

Barney carefully scanned his surroundings for any sign of the red pickup that he was sure had been shadowing him. “We done for the night?”

“Yeah.” Sam’s frog fingers turned the locking nut free.

“See you here, tonight at eleven o’clock. Get some sleep before then.”

“Yeah.” Sam turned and rocketed the locking nut off into the East River.

“Hey, Sam,” Joey complained. “Now we’re gonna have to go back to the shop…”

“So we’ll go back to the fucking shop for another fucking locking nut! Louie never gives us
our
rig…”

Barney cocked his head. “Your rig?”

Sam got a dreamy look in his eyes. “Yeah, we got a rig, back in the yard.”

“Well, it isn’t, like, ours,” Joey added. “But we got all the wrenches, and a tap set, an’ extra locking nuts, an’ all. But Louie, our boss, he took it away from us, thought we were gettin’ too, you know, like it was actually ours.”

“Now we got this piece of shit.” Sam tossed a pipe wrench onto the back of the truck, smashing a cardboard box full of glass sample jars. He didn’t seem to notice.

Barney rubbed his jaw. “Anybody in the yard at this time of night?”

“Course not. It’s in the middle of the fuckin’ night.”

Barney pulled bolt shears from the truck and grinned at them.

“Hey!” Joey smacked himself in the head, smearing grease across his brow. “You know what he’s sayin’? We cut the lock off the gate, get into the yard now, we can switch trucks, go directly to the day job.”

Sam looked puck-stunned. Then he smiled, gaps showing between his teeth.

“Barney!” Sam grabbed the shears. “You’re a fuckin’ genius. A fucking criminal genius!”

And so it was in high spirits that the Pazzo brothers headed for the yard in Hoboken. They switched trucks and got to the site of their day job, at the end of Borden Avenue in Queens, ninety minutes early. Enough time to catch some shut-eye. They were so full of themselves for having swiped their truck back, and so excited by the idea of their boss, Louie, finding what they’d pulled, that they couldn’t sleep. Aerosmith’s “Rag Doll” pounded from the AM radio.

“Fuckin’ Louie’s gonna absolutely blow his top.” Tears of mirth filled Joey’s eyes as he handed a joint to Sam.

“He’d shit if he knew we was double-shifting.” Sam chuckled, drawing deeply on the smoke. “It’s perfect. Out there, under the Triborough, who’s ever gonna see us?”

“Fuckin’ nobody,” Joey asserted, coughing out smoke from his lungs.

“Imagine, drilling for a boat. What the fuck?” Sam shook his head, sipping from the dwindling joint.

Joey tugged on his lower lip, suddenly deep in thought.

“Hey, whadda you think we’re really drillin’ for out there, Sam? I mean, sure, a boat. But at night? Something feels, y’know, fucking funny about it, is all.”

Sam pondered this a moment, then shook the idea away.

“Nah.” Sam handed the roach back to his brother. “Like what could there be out there, under all that crap? Concrete, shingles, bricks, wood, and crapola.”

“I dunno. But I found this. Barney dropped it by accident.” Joey shrugged, passing a folded piece of paper he pulled from his top pocket.

Sam finished pinching the remaining smoke into an alligator clip and traded it for the paper. Unfolding it, he quickly figured out that it was a section of newspaper. It was some list of numbers, with the word “gold” followed by lists of countries and prices.

“Know what this looks like t’me?” Sam waved the clipping at his brother. “It’s a list of, like, prices for gold.”

“S’what I thought, Sam. Think it has anything to do with what we’re doin’?” Joey flared his lighter, inhaled, and the joint disappeared.

“Fuck, I dunno. Maybe if we sleep on it.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

The cab of the truck was a haze of pungent smoke, and the Pazzos had gone half-lidded. Quizzing, and the cannabis, had made them weary. Arms folded, they nestled into their respective corners of the truck’s cab. The sky behind them to the east glowed purple with dawn, shimmering hypnotically on the skyscrapers across the river in Manhattan.

Sam let his lids and chin drop.

Joey commenced snoring.

Reclining in her older brother’s Caprice on 61st Street, Maureen yawned and looked at the glowing green numbers on the dash clock. 6:05
AM
. She’d been staring at the front entrance to an apartment building since midnight, and had witnessed Drummond Yager in the company of a tall Argentine woman enter the high-rise around three
AM
.

“Here we are again.” Maureen sighed at the dashboard. Nothing worse than a stakeout. She’d done quite enough of them both as a detective and in her “new, improved” career as an investigator. She shook her head, thinking how things never quite turn out the way you want. First thing out of high school, she went into the Coast Guard to get a GI bill, which mystified her family. Why not just join the Fire Department? Four of her five brothers were firemen, her dad and granddad had been firemen.
What, the NYFD not good enough for you?

In the Coast Guard, she worked as an MP, so she used her GI bill to go to a university in Boston for a degree in criminology. Her family could see where this was going.
You’re going to become a cop? What, the NYFD not good enough for you?

While in school in Boston, a friend convinced her to join her as an exotic dancer at a strip club called Foxies. It paid well, sometimes eight hundred dollars a night, and Maureen never had trouble paying for her textbooks or buying herself a car. She managed to save quite a bit of money, with the idea of buying a house back in Brooklyn. That’s when she met Donny, a Boston firefighter, and they got engaged, which pleased her family. Then Donny got the idea to start a fireproofing company, and she bankrolled him. The business failed, and so did their relationship. That was the end of the bankroll, and all of this coincided with her graduation.

So Maureen returned to New York and enrolled in the NYPD. Her father and brothers weren’t even impressed when she rapidly made her way to detective. But being a detective, especially as a woman, really began to wear her down.

To be sure, Maureen considered herself a tough chick and could hang with the guys without her nose getting all out of joint over the stray sexist remark. Hell, she gave it right back to them, which, coming from an all-male Irish-Catholic family, wasn’t alien to her. But the last couple of years she’d gotten sick of it. And that didn’t necessarily mean that she wanted to paint her toenails and get chatty with the gals down at some beauty parlor. Maureen guessed what irked her was that she wanted to be able to act any way she wanted.

The Caprice was getting cold again, so Maureen started the engine. She recalled an instance when a dozen roses had been delivered to one of the patrol-women at her precinct. The cops all gave the woman a hard time about it, insinuating that she would soon be on maternity leave, never to be seen again. Even Maureen laughed at the blushing patrolwoman, who’d stuck her thumbs in her belt and told everybody to fuck off. Maureen had stopped laughing when she realized nobody had ever bought her flowers. Not even Donny, that scumbag.

She didn’t regret leaving the force. The idea of becoming an investigator bloomed when in the course of her work she discovered how many at-large illegal aliens had bounties on their heads, either from bondsmen or from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. She soon discovered that the INS made virtually no effort to round them up, and that it was often as easy as flipping through a phone book to locate the would-be deportees. Ninety percent of her targets assumed by her manner that she was a cop and did not resist. Tougher than waiting for them to emerge from their domiciles was trying to cash them in at the INS, an agency of bureaucrats who lived for their next coffee break.

Thermos in hand, Maureen poured herself a cup of coffee and moaned. “Nothin’s easy,” she said aloud, but wondered if it wouldn’t be a whole lot easier with a partner. Maybe a bit less lonely too.

The doorman opened the front door of the apartment building and the tall Argentine woman strode out onto the sidewalk wearing a full-length silver fox coat. She headed west at a purposeful gait.

“Christ, that coat. It’s the size of a comforter, woman that tall.” As Maureen started the car, she figured this might just be the tall Argentine woman who’d taken the Costa Rican jaunt instead of Barney Swires. Maureen rolled the Caprice to the traffic light at the end of the block. She could see the Argentine fox standing on First Avenue hailing a cab.

“Damn.” Maureen grabbed her cell phone from the passenger seat and dialed a number.

“Patrick? It’s Maureen. Yeah, I know what the fuck time it is. You wanna make some money? Fifty bucks plus cab fare. I need you to stake out a guy…Well, skip school today. I’m your big sister, I’ll write you a friggin’ note.”

Fifteen minutes later, Maureen had tailed the cab to 25th Street and a white brick apartment building with a glass block lobby. It stood among similar buildings across from a red brick armory. After about an hour, the Argentine fox reemerged, now wearing jeans, a black turtleneck, jean jacket, and a black baseball cap. She proceeded to walk down the block to Park Avenue, past a couple of Indian restaurants to a self-service parking garage. When she didn’t emerge for some time, Maureen got antsy, shoved her old police placard on her dash, and parked the Caprice in front of a hydrant. She bought a newspaper and a cup of coffee for the casual look, then strode down the ramp into the garage. She waved at the attendant in the booth as she passed, who ceased gnawing his bialy long enough to squint at what he assumed was a regular customer.

Pretending to be engrossed in her paper, Maureen drank coffee while she corkscrewed down the ramps, eyes scanning for the Argentine fox. She did a double take when she noticed what looked like her target’s cap on the ground next to a red pickup. The truck’s bed was covered with a tarp. Maureen bent down to pick up the cap, and when she stood, a fist hit her square between the eyes, her brain blossoming with an explosion of flowery sparks. And just as she was trying to force her eyes to see, the swimming blue haze flashed white, her lungs went cold, and her limbs stiffened.

Instead of calling for help, her reflex was to try to yell what she was thinking: “Mace.”

Back up in the booth, Bialy Man could have sworn he heard a cow moo. But he was distracted by the dark-haired babe in the red pickup holding out her ticket and a twenty.

Patrick McNary was sixteen, the fifth and presumably last of Maureen’s brothers. He was the only brother yet to become a fireman, and he didn’t have the guts—not yet—to tell them he wanted to be a cop like his sister. It sounded bad, and would surely earn him no end of grief. But he had it all planned. He’d tell his family he was taking the test to become a fireman, but he’d really go for police cadet. And when he had his cadet’s uniform and peaked cadet hat, he’d saunter into Minogue’s Bar and they’d lose it.