Last Chance for Glory (11 page)

I
T WAS JUST A
little past midnight when Bell Kosinski, after waving good-bye to the assembled regulars, stepped into the middle of a torrential downpour. He froze in surprise for a moment, still holding the door, and let the rain wash over him. Then he turned back to Ed O’Leary.

“The heat’s breakin’, Ed. It’s gonna cool off.” He noted O’Leary’s indifferent shrug, understood that weather was a great irrelevancy in the bartender’s world, that the faithful attended despite hurricanes and blizzards.

He let the door go and started off to walk the few blocks to his Fourteenth Avenue apartment, the one above the Cheery Day Laundromat. He wasn’t usually given to nostalgia, but on this night, prodded by the sudden appearance of Marty Blake, his thoughts wandered back to his earliest days on the job. Days when, his honeymoon barely finished and a child on the way, he’d been entirely sober.

Once again, he was viewing the neon rainbow of nighttime New York through the smeared, greasy windshield of an RMP. (Only they didn’t call them RMPs then. Back in 1969, they were still patrol cars.) His partner, Johnny Dedham, a ten-year veteran with the eyes of an eagle, tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Check out the two mutts on the corner, Bell. The ones in front of the bar.”

Kosinski did as he was told, peering out between wiper strokes. The men were arguing. Their gesticulating arms, in quick, constant motion, jerked from streak to streak.

“Hit the siren, Bell. See if we can shut this off without getting out of the car.”

It was already too late, but neither of them realized it.

The two men were silhouetted against a window outlined in violent red neon. Neon that, blurred by the rain, blurred again by the greasy windshield, changed the color of the blood, so that what Bell Kosinski saw, when mutt number one sliced mutt number two’s throat, was a cloud of black smoke.

“What the fuck?”

“He cut him. He cut him, you idiot. Shit. Now I’m gonna have to get wet.”

Kosinski moved fast, leaving his partner to worry about the wounded man. Propelled by adrenalin, he ran without fatigue, his gun drawn, his nightstick clenched in his free hand. Wanting the perp to come at him with the knife. Wanting an excuse to shoot.

But he didn’t get it. When he finally came down that last alleyway, his own breath whistling in his ears, the perp, instead of leaping at him from a fire escape, was sitting with his back against a locked door. He was crying.

When Bell Kosinski came back to the present, he found himself staring at his own reflection in the darkened window of the Whitestone Unisex Barber Shop. The rain had flattened his blond hair, plastering it against his skull. Making it seem, he decided after a moment, as if he’d shaved his head.

What I look like, he thought, what with the nose and all, is a toy Kojack. Except that I don’t have the trench coat. Except that I’m standing here in my shirtsleeves, freezing my ass off.

He put his head into the wind and walked down the block. The rain was nearly horizontal now, pushing into his face and eyes despite his bent head. Which was why he didn’t see the figure in the doorway until it actually called out to him.

“Hey, Bell, I been lookin’ for you.”

Kosinski reached beneath his arm for the gun he no longer carried. He was puzzled for a moment, then recognized his old partner, Tommy Brannigan, standing in the shadows. Brannigan was sporting his shit-eating grin. The one that meant he wanted something.

“This a social call, Tommy?” Kosinski stepped under the canopy of Cho’s Chinese Restaurant. Rain drummed on the canvas, dripped down through several small tears in the fabric.

“Jeez, Bell, you don’t change. Still as hostile as ever.”

The grin, much to Kosinski’s amazement, actually widened. “What could I say, Tommy? It’s my nature.”

“So, how ya been?”

“Just great. I only been off the job a few weeks and already I found a new rhythm for my life. How ’bout you, Tommy? I heard you’re workin’ downtown, heard you made Detective, First. Now, if you could only pass the sergeant’s exam, you’d have a real future.”

The smile disappeared for just a minute, then re-formed. “Look, Bell, I didn’t come here to trade insults. I …”

“That’s too bad. Trading insults is the only thing I’m really good at.” Kosinski stared at Brannigan’s dark, curly hair. The rain, instead of plastering it against his skull, instead of making him look like an aging television detective, lifted it into a rich, dark halo. “And I hate your hair, too.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just tell me what you want, Tommy. I’m freezin’ my ass off.”

Brannigan took a deep breath, let it out. “Bell, you remember a mope named Billy Sowell?”

“Sowell? Lemme think for a minute. Oh, yeah, I remember. A retard. He went down for killing a broad over by Gramercy Park.”

“That’s the one.”

“Didn’t have much to do with that, Tommy. If I recall, I was on vacation when you picked him up.”

“That’s true. I won’t argue with that. But you and me were partners on the first stage of the investigation. We caught the squeal.”

Kosinski didn’t answer immediately. He listened to the rain, watched drops of water zigzag down the window behind Brannigan’s halo. Cars passed behind him. Strangely, he could hear tires hissing over the wet roadway, but the engines, muffled by the rain pounding on the canopy, were entirely inaudible.

“Somebody’s making noises like they wanna reopen the case,” Brannigan said. “People are gonna be nosing around. Asking questions.”

“People? Somebody?”

“Yeah, look, there’s something I gotta tell you. Something I should’ve told you a long time ago.”

“You mean about putting my name on a bullshit five?” Kosinski paused, but Brannigan chose not to reply, though the smile was entirely gone. “Ya did somethin’ really stupid, Tommy. But, then, smart was never your strong point.”

“I had to protect the captain’s informant.”

“Fuck the informant. What you were doing was protecting the captain. What was his name again? Oh yeah, Grogan. You were protecting Captain Grogan and you’re still protectin’ him. Only he’s not a captain any more, is he?” Kosinski saw the truth in Brannigan’s furious eyes. Saw the truth and laughed out loud. “So, what’d he make, Tommy? Inspector? Deputy Chief? You wouldn’t by any chance be workin’ under him, would ya?”

“You’re a drunk, Kosinski. A miserable, fucking drunk.”

“Clever choice of words, Tommy. Perceptive as hell.”

Kosinski never saw Brannigan move. He didn’t feel any pain, either. But there was no other way he could be sitting in the rain with the taste of diluted blood on his tongue unless he’d been sucker-punched.

“I tried to do this nice, Bell. I knew it was hopeless, but I tried.”

“Thanks for the consideration.” Kosinski struggled to his feet.

“What I’m telling you here—
telling,
not asking—is don’t break the line. Don’t sell out the job. Remember who you are and do what’s right.”

Kosinski wanted to say that he was retired and he didn’t owe the job a goddamned thing, but Tommy Brannigan was already standing beside the Dodge sedan parked at the curb.

“Hey, Tommy, does ‘what’s right’ mean putting a retarded kid in a prison cell?”

Brannigan pulled away without bothering to answer. Kosinski watched the sedan’s blurred tail lights for a moment, trying to think of something else to say, then plodded off toward home.

Home, for Bell Kosinski, was a single, large room with a minikitchen at one end and a bathroom at the other. It was one of two above the Cheery Day Laundromat, the other being occupied by the laundromat’s owner, a Mexican named Miguel Escobar who was saving to bring his family to New York.

Kosinski picked his way across the room, skirting the unmade bed, the ratty armchairs, the scarred formica table with its two rickety chairs. He opened the refrigerator and pulled a bottle of Smirnoff out of the freezer. His hand stuck to the cold glass, a sensation he somehow found comforting.

“Fire in the hole!” he shouted, putting the bottle to his mouth, sucking the fluid down.

And it
was
fire, no doubt about it. The vodka burned its way to his ulcer, then lay in a smoldering puddle.

Kosinski ignored the pain, counting on the vodka to numb all unpleasant side effects. That was why he drank in the first place.

He got up, crossed to the bureau, retrieved his .38, and carried it to the table.

“Haven’t played this game in a long time,” he muttered. “I missed it.”

Kosinski popped out the cylinder, let the cartridges drop into his left hand, laid the gun on the table. Back when he was still a tough guy, when he was still sober, he’d really loved this weapon. There was a power to it, a power to holding life and death in his hands that had nothing to do with his own cowboy self-image. The power was in the weapon itself. He hadn’t felt that power in a long time.

“Maybe,” he said out loud, “that’s because I never shot anybody. If I’d shot someone, it’d most likely be different.”

But, of course, he knew the pistol still
had
that power. That it was still possessed by the same demons. That
he
was the one who’d changed.

Kosinski picked three cartridges off the tabletop, loaded one in every other chamber, snapped the cylinder back into the frame, put the gun into his mouth. He lingered over the taste and smell of gun oil on steel for a moment, finding it familiar, like one of the Cryders regulars on a weekday afternoon. Then he got down to business.

“Heads,” he muttered, “I get the kid out of jail. Tails, I lose.”

B
ELL KOSINSKI, STANDING IN
front of Marty Blake’s apartment door, figured he looked pretty damn good. He actually thought the words—“pretty damn
good.”
And why not? He’d taken his time with it, had stood under the shower until his nipples curled, run the razor across his face, soaped up, and run it again. He’d have blow-dried his hair if he’d owned a blow dryer—as it was, he’d trimmed his sideburns, snipped the little hairs in his nostrils and his ears. All with a rusted scissors so dull they’d have been better used as a pair of tweezers.

As luck would have it, his best suit, a tan, poplin beauty gleaned from an A&S clearance rack, had been waiting on a hanger in the closet. It was still covered by a dry cleaner’s plastic bag, while his two other suits were lying on the floor next to several pairs of scuffed shoes. His luck had held as he’d searched his bureau to find one lightly starched white shirt, one stain-free tie, one laundered—though not, of course,
ironed
—handkerchief, two matching brown socks.

Unfortunately, none of it, he had to admit, would have come without a little help. No, without a little help, his hands wouldn’t stop shaking long enough to knot the tie, button the shirt, zip his goddamned fly.

“But that was then,” he said aloud, “and this is now.”

He rang the bell, waited, rehearsed his opening lines. What he’d say if Blake answered, what he’d say if Blake’s wife or girlfriend answered. But not what he’d say if a middle-aged woman with her right hand jammed into a shoulder bag answered. Not what he’d say if her hand was wrapped around a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver.

“Could I help you?”

Kosinski stood stock-still for a moment, then his training took over. “You got a permit for that gun, lady?”

“You a cop?”

That stopped him again. “Not exactly,” he finally said. “I’m retired. My name’s Kosinski.”

“Yeah? Ya know, my husband, he should rest in peace, was also a cop. But he wasn’t one of those cops who thinks his wife is too delicate to hear about the job. No, he used to tell me all about it, about the blood and the bodies. About the rapes and the rapists. And I guess it must’ve sunk in, because now that he’s gone, I’m very, very careful. Show me some ID, Kosinski.”

Bell Kosinski fished out a set of photo ID that officially declared him, “NYPD, Retired.” He held it up, tried to smile, said, “Ya know, I still have powers of arrest.”

The woman read the ID, nodded, let the revolver drop into the shoulder bag. “If you wanted to arrest someone, you would have stayed on the job. Are you here to see my son?”

“If your son’s name is Marty Blake, I am.”

The woman stepped back. “C’mon in. Marty’s takin’ a shower.”

As Bell Kosinski walked past Blake’s mother, a door at the far end of the apartment opened and Marty Blake stepped into the hallway. He was wearing a terry-cloth bathrobe that’d been given to him by Rebecca Webber, a robe she appropriated every time she came to visit. He could still smell her powder in the soft cotton, which is what he was doing when he saw Bell Kosinski standing next to his mother.

“You here to see me?” he said, his nose buried in the robe’s sleeve.

“I didn’t spend two hours on a bus because I like the neighborhood.”

Blake noted Kosinski’s swollen lip, fought his own rising anger. “If you came here to warn me off, you can forget about it.”

“I came here to help.”

“Help?”

“Mr. Kosinski was twenty-two years on the job,” Dora Blake said. “Show some respect. For your father, if for nobody else.” Blake started to respond, thought better of it. He was opposed to tilting at windmills as a matter of principle. Much better to engage the clutch, let the vanes spin to no effect.

“Tell you what, Ma—why don’t you entertain Mr. Kosinski while I get dressed. Get him a cup of coffee, fix him a bagel.” Blake disappeared without waiting for an answer. Kosinski watched for a minute, then turned with a shrug.

“I don’t think your son likes me,” he said.

“You’re saying there’s something he
does
like? Besides himself?”

She led him into a small kitchen, sat him down, poured him a cup of coffee. “You should call me Dora,” she announced.

“And you can call me Bell. Short for Bela.” He slid a pint bottle of Smirnoff out of his jacket pocket and slopped half an inch into his cup. Thinking, What the fuck, might as well show ’em what ya got. Who says beggars can’t be choosers?

“My husband, he should rest in peace, drank himself to death.” Dora Blake filled her cup, then sat down across from Kosinski. “What is it with cops that they go to pieces the minute they retire?”