Rackets, p.12
Rackets, page 12
After a time Keefe waved off the applause. “Now there are people who have never so much as held a steady job.” Heads turned to Mike. “They might tell you how much better they can do. Well, I, me and my executive board, have been bringing home the bacon for a lot of years, my brothers. That you can take to the bank. And as we all know, a bird in the hand is worth more than a whole lot of bullshit coming from some troublemaker.”
More applause, shouts. A distinct “Fuck Mike Dolan!”
Mike felt the weight of hatred hit him. He stood and went outside. The Union Square Greenmarket was bustling. Tourists, serious shoppers, and neighborhood people out for a stroll wandered through, picking up vegetables and bread, cheeses, fish from upstate rivers, flowers and herbs, wines from Long Island. He watched three young women, tall and slender almost to the point of poor health, pass by. The trio wore rings through their noses. All these people lived in a different world, sharing this same small island.
There was just a hint of new green against the winter black of the denuded trees, the stirring of spring. Despite Keefe’s attempt to buy off the members, Mike felt a bit of optimism for the first time in months. It was eight weeks till election and he was beginning to think he was making some progress. He placed his gym bag down on the sidewalk against the building and took out of it piles of his campaign literature. The leaflet was simple, direct, and laid out his platform. Accountability, Fairness, Better Wages and Benefits. It featured one picture: Keefe and Tommy Magic in a smiling embrace.
Teamsters started to pile out of the ballroom. He passed out leaflets trying to gauge the level of support by looking into their eyes. Some were cold and sullen, others angry. But a fair number were quietly encouraging and accepted a leaflet. Quite a few actually winked as they passed. He figured many of them would be emboldened by the secret ballot. When that was announced he had been ecstatic, but now he wondered if it would make any difference at all. Harry the Hat came out, snatched a leaflet, and said. “I hope you beat that bastard’s ass good, Dolan. But I doubt you will. I’d watch myself, I was you. Those fuckers are killers. Stone killers.”
“Thank you, Harry. You really know how to cheer a guy up.”
Mike looked up to see a phalanx of overfed Teamsters coming toward him. Keefe, surrounded by his personal goon squad, moved along like a feudal lord. He was dressed in his usual two-thousand-dollar suit and tie, a sharp overcoat. His entourage was dressed for labor, except for his bodyguard Cronin, who wore a blue blazer and gray slacks and looked on his way to a country-club cocktail hour. Keefe, all twisted grins and ill-gotten confidence, told an anecdote as they leaned toward him, footmen to a prince. The Greenmarket strollers regarded the Teamsters with curiosity. When Keefe saw Mike, he stopped and glared. “Dolan.” He laughed a cold sound like a rock rolling across the hood of a car. One of his sidekicks said, “That piece of shit. You want me to straighten him out, Frankie?”
“Nah. He’s not worth the trouble, Timmy. Hey, where’s that punk kid of yours, Dolan?”
Mike smiled warily. “Hey, Frankie, this is between you and me, man to man. Why don’t you leave the kid out of it.” He watched the muscles around Keefe’s eyes twitch, his jaw clench. Keefe was bold when backed up. Mike thrust a leaflet toward his opponent. “Here, it might be nice to read some truth for a change.”
Cronin shouldered his way between them and snatched the leaflet, tearing it from Mike’s hands. He glanced at the picture of Keefe and the fat mafioso. “You some kind of wiseass, pal?” He crumbled it into a ball and bounced it off Mike’s chest. Mike stood his ground. Keefe leaned toward him and hissed, “When this election is over, you and that kid are gonna see that I’m through playing nice.”
Mike nodded. Keefe and his entourage pushed past him, the mass of muscle moving down the sidewalk. Mike sucked in a breath. He watched a squad car that had been parked on the corner roll up and stop. He had called a guy from the neighborhood, Jack Minogue, who was captain of the local precinct, and asked him to have a cop or two handy in case trouble broke out. Mike was surprised to see that Jack had come himself.
“Thanks, Jack. Nice to see you.”
“These days, Mike, with this prick downtown, I couldn’t risk sending any kids over here. They got wind of it they’d send them to work traffic in Staten Island, the vindictive bastard.”
“Well, I appreciate you keeping an eye out.”
Minogue watched a few stragglers come out of the ballroom and shoot dirty looks at them. “You ever consider retiring? Just admitting defeat? There is honor in that, you know. What’s the song? ‘Know when to fold ’em.’”
Mike looked to the distance, at the retreating Keefe, then back at Minogue. “Every day, Jackie, every damn day.”
Tara and Andy were assigned to plainclothes detail. Quality of life. Crack down on urinaters and public imbibers of alcohol, pot smokers, kids with boom boxes, and various other violators of the civil order. It was easy collars and OT. She hoped to go in with some friends on a shore house for the coming summer.
They left the precinct in an unmarked car. The streets were crowded, alive on this first warm night since October. Everyone looked tired and drawn from a winter spent without enough nutrients fresh air, or sunlight. Music spilled out of the open doors of bars, the sounds of intoxication and merriment. Calls were coming in steady; drunken brawls, noise complaints, a cardiac arrest on 156th Street. A Jeep pulled up beside them at the light, blasting music so loud it seemed the metal was pulsing with sound.
Tara rolled down her window, and the driver, wearing a fedora over a blue bandanna, smiled at her. She flashed her badge and mouthed, “Turn it off.” The smile was gone as if he’d been slapped.
Andy pulled over in front of a bodega. “I’m gonna get a bottle of water. You want?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
She watched him get out of the car. A half dozen kids passed, jeans hanging off their asses, baseball hats at a variety of angles except frontward, carrying bottles wrapped in paper bags. The radio crackled with calls. She felt a twinge of anxiety as if something was about to happen. A man came out of a building a few doors up the block. He wore shorts and a hooded sweatshirt and carried a basketball under one arm. He stared at her for a second, then bounced the ball down his stoop and turned to walk in the direction of Broadway. The feeling passed, and she reminded herself to get Knicks tickets for her father’s birthday. She leaned her head back against the seat. She had run six miles before work and was feeling alert and rested. Then she heard the shots.
It was very clearly the pop, pop, pop of a pistol coming from the bodega. For a second, everything stopped, and there was a sharp stillness around her. She took a breath and felt almost high from the adrenal rush. “Holy shit.” She picked up the mike and, with a calm she did not feel, said, “Shots fired. 1-9-8 St. Nick. Storefront. 10-13, 10-13.” Then she was out of the car and moving, all animal instinct propelling her, lucid and purposeful.
She pulled her pistol and moved toward the gunfire with her badge hanging from her neck. She went through the door, pushing it wide open, and dropped to a crouch, swinging the pistol before her in a wide arc. Andy was lying on his back. There was blood pooling beneath him and his breath was ragged and fast. His scared eyes rolled up toward the counter. A warning. She spun away from the door as a man stood and shot where she had just crouched an instant before. She felt the whistle of the bullets, the air hot with their passing. She came up firing and pulled off three quick shots. They caught the perp high in the chest, each bullet propelling him half a step backward, his body jerky from the impact, like a puppet whose strings are being yanked without reason. His face went from rage to confusion to blankness. As he collapsed upon himself he squeezed off a parting shot, his last act in this world. The bullet caught Tara square in her left breast, knocking her back against the shelves. She landed oh her ass on the dirty floor, and cans of cat food rained down on her. She could not breathe. She started to panic. It felt as if her lungs were being squeezed in a vise. As she fought for air, she felt she might die. She rolled onto her side and stared at a cat-food label. She wondered if this was the last thing she was going to see in this life. Her head rang from the shots. She needed oxygen. The place smelled of cordite and blood and shit and fear. She looked up to see another gunman staring wide-eyed at her through a display case. He looked to be no more than a schoolkid. She watched his eyes go from hunted to hunter.
The perp vaulted the counter and stood over Andy with something like mirth on his face. He pointed his gun at Andy’s head. Tara took a bite of air, sat up, and started shooting. The gunman fell straight down on top of Andy in a heap. She wanted to scream from the pain but still could not get enough air, she sucked in as much as she could, filling her bruised lungs. Feeling came back into her legs and arms. She wiggled her toes, was able to feel parts of herself, locate the pain and move past it. She realized she was wearing her bulletproof vest. She belly-crawled over to the second shooter. He was weeping. The blood was squirting out of him, almost comically red, it was so bright and full of fleeting life. His face was turning a color it would only be this one time.
“I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. Help me, help me.” Blood bubbles dripped down his chin. He gurgled when he spoke, blood filling his lungs.
Tara pulled in more air. She put the pistol to his temple and said, “Let me see your fucking hands!”
“Help me.”
She felt the trigger finger, was aware of herself fully. She pressed the pistol harder, digging into the flesh of his skull. She looked down at Andy and figured he must be dead. She thought, I should kill this person. Instead, she lifted her pistol and smacked it over his head until he shut up. She pushed him off her partner. She tried to steady herself on all fours to gain purchase, but slipped in all the blood, her face smacking hard on the floor. She righted herself and raised Andy’s head and held it in her lap. His eyes were wide with fear and he was trying to speak, but no words came together. “Ssssshh.” She tried to wipe the blood off his face, but there was too much of it, rivers of it, lakes of it. She never thought there could be so much of it. Andy was breathing weakly. She could not tell where he had been hit. She realized he was not wearing his vest. “Oh Jesus, Andy. Jesus Jesus Jesus.”
All she could do was hold him and wait for help in the awful silence of the dead and the dying.
In the ambulance, she drifted in and out of consciousness. They had pulled off her shirt and vest, leaving her bare-chested until a fellow officer draped his jacket over her. She had seen the blood, heard them talking about a wound on her neck, apparently from a ricochet or bullet fragments. She listened to mad radio chatter, felt the welling of excitement, the significance of the event congealing in the close rocking space of the speeding ambulance. A paramedic stroked her hair and whispered that she would be fine. She felt cold and then hot and cold and then hot. Finally, fully alert, she began to understand what had happened, that somehow the job would never be the same again. One of the cops from her precinct knelt by her side. He smiled and she reached and grabbed his arm, looking to steady her world.
Jimmy sat at the bar in Johnny Mac’s sipping bad coffee and trying to keep the past at bay. It wasn’t easy. The bar was the focal point of his life in Inwood, of his relationship with Tara. He had called the hospital that morning and was told that only immediate family would be allowed to visit Tara until the afternoon. He considered that he would not feel comfortable going alone and this troubled him. He wished that, after all they had been through, they could be friends once again.
Jack leaned over the bar and nodded down the end. “You hear about Last Stand Sweeney?”
Jimmy looked at the neighborhood fixture. “No.”
“He went on another One Man March.”
“He don’t want any company?”
“Couldn’t find anybody stupid enough.”
“What’s he marching about now?”
“Says that he believes in the old saying all politics is local, and since we palefaces are the minority here now, that we should be getting the special treatment. Wants some of the affirmative action. Now, our Dominican neighbors, they just kind of watch him and laugh. He’s got a sign that says ‘no justice no peace,’ a bullhorn. A regular albino Al Sharpton. Some kid dropped a water balloon filled with piss on his head. He wants to file a civil rights suit.”
Jimmy laughed. He had called a friend at City Hall and gotten an update on Tara’s condition from a cop on the detail whom he was friendly with. Stable. Her wounds were superficial and she appeared to be recovering swiftly. Still, he was anxious to see her.
He stood and took off his jacket, thinking about the way things had ended for them. He had been freaked when she said she was pregnant; the news hit him like a gavel between the eyes. As much as he thought he was opposed to it, he lobbied for an abortion, which he saw as a second chance, a reprieve; they would have kids later on. When she wavered, he blew up. What a selfish asshole he had been. There were days when he yearned to turn back the clock, to right the wrongs. He had lied to himself for years, but now, fast approaching thirty, his pretense was wearing thin. He knew the level of hurt he had inflicted on her, carried it with him. He might have a dream, wake in the night, reaching for her. Or it might hit him walking down the street or over a beer with his friends, a spasm of guilt and regret. He had fucked up royally.
It was midafternoon and the place was slow. Outside the weather had soured and cold showers were slanting across Broadway, borne by occasional gusts. Patrons entered and shook water off themselves like dogs emerging from a pond. Jimmy was into his third cup of coffee. The caffeine was making him a little edgy, so he pushed it away and ordered a glass of ginger ale.
“Hittin’ it heavy, huh, Jimmy?”
“Things to do, Jackie, things to do.”
“Tara?”
“Yeah.”
“Too bad about that. Good kid. TV says she’s gonna be fine, though.”
“Let’s hope.”
He checked the wall clock. Three-thirty. Liam should be on his way home from work. He looked out the window and watched life pass on Broadway. Inwood. He couldn’t believe he was back. By seventeen he and Tara were inseparable, were pals as well as lovers. She was one of the few girls the guys did not object to having around since she could hold her own always, whether they were shooting hoops, drinking, or cracking wise. They stood exactly the same height, five feet eleven and a half inches. She had none of the coyness of a teenage girl in the face of testosterone. At the same time, she was easily the best-looking girl in the neighborhood.
“You seen Liam?”
Jack wiped the bar down and shook his head. “You been away a lot. I gotta say, your pal Liam has gone overboard. I mean, I gotta be honest. I don’t doubt for a minute he’s gonna end up doing something like driving around a truck full of fertilizer and fuel oil and unleashing some horror based on all the voices in his head. Or maybe he climbs on a roof and rat-a-tat-tat, there goes a whole lotta people’s afternoons. ’Cause, Jimmy, I ain’t shitting you, the guy is more than three-quarters the way down a slippery slope. And he ain’t got no brakes.”
“Sounds like the old Liam.”
“Jimmy, this fucking guy, I’m telling you, he spends like what, seventy percent of his time lying in wait, about five percent actually pouncing, and the rest of his time sorting through the wreckage. I mean, the guy’s got a hard-on for me over something I did in grammar school. I mean, we’re going back to the Carter administration, for fuck sake, and I got no idea what his beef is. Maybe I stepped on his foot. I can’t remember last month. But he’s out to get me, busts my balls every time he’s in here. You hear what he did downtown?”
Jimmy looked up at Jack. He was not interested in his diatribe against Liam but he had little choice but to listen. Jack had his knee up on a cooler behind the bar and was leaning over the wood toward him. “He starts seeing this girl he met running in the park. She’s some secretary down on Wall Street, good-looking girl, one of these big investment banks. So she opens up to Liam about how her boss, some vice president down there, is always giving her a load of grief, yelling at her when he wants to, your typical telephone tough guy, asshole boss. So Liam hears this, figures he’s into this chick now, he’s gonna show her how much he cares, you know, prove his love. This is after, maybe, you know, all of three or four dates. He borrows a maintenance uniform from Billy Boardman, the guys, with the 32 B-J service employees, sneaks into the building like he’s there to mop a floor or some shit, goes into the boss’s office right about the close of day, shuts the door, and starts choking the guy with his tie, slapping him around like he’s a bad third grader, makes the guy swear he’s never gonna be mean to this chick again.”
Jimmy laughed.
“It’s really not that funny. Chick lost her job, of course, but she was too freaked out to give Liam up to the cops.” Jack went down the line to refill some drinks. When he came back, he straightened the front of his shirt and pulled on his pant legs. “All this, and the guy is still on probation for punching out that bouncer down the Village.”
Jimmy was glad the bar was slow. He did not need to deal with any bullshit over losing his job and crawling back uptown. He had not yet told his father he was back to stay. He had come up with the fiction of Susan having family in town. He had made a few calls, started to put together a résumé, but so far there was no interest expressed in his services. None. Zero. He was getting worried. He was nearly broke. He considered the humiliation of moving home, of possibly going back on a concrete shovel. He turned his hands over, palms up, and looked at the softness of them. He used to have three rows of calluses like ridges of broken hills rising from the contours of his hands. Now they might be mistaken for the hands of a computer geek.
