Rizzo’s Fire Read online

  They nodded at her, remaining silent.

  “My kids called him uncle. Uncle Robbie. He liked that. Even my husband, who doesn’t trust anybody, was comfortable with Robbie being around the kids. You know, these days … sometimes with relatives … But Robbie was just a big, dopey, gentle guy who didn’t want anything out of life except to see his name on the cover of a book someday.

  “You know,” she said sheepishly, “I have to admit, I was curious and I went out to the garage one day. I read some of Robbie’s stories.” She shrugged. “I’m not much of a reader, I’d rather see a movie or what ever, but I have to say they seemed pretty good to me. I don’t know, maybe if he had had some guidance … I think he just didn’t know how to go about it. Getting himself published, I mean. Maybe if someone had helped him … Who knows.”

  With a sigh, she went on. “Or maybe he just aimed too high. Imagine? The guy couldn’t even hold a menial job for more than a year or two at a time. And he aimed too high.” Resignation came to her eyes. “Imagine that?”

  AFTER NEARLY an hour of further questioning Carbone and her newly arrived husband, the two detectives made their way down the concrete driveway toward the detached garage. Wispy snowflakes floated before their eyes, the sky growing darker, the air crisper.

  “Last winter was bad enough,” Rizzo said. “Now it’s gonna start snowin’ before Thanksgiving?”

  “They’re just flurries, Joe, relax. But I gotta ask, why are we checking out here? We already saw this stuff, in his apartment. These are just copies.”

  Rizzo glanced at her as they reached the garage. He raised the borrowed key, unlocking the weathered doors.

  “Remember Tucci, Cil? That kid who got shot in the foot? Remember him?” he asked, swinging one hinged door open.

  “Yeah, I remember,” she answered. “What?”

  Rizzo reached into the garage, throwing a switch and flooding the musty interior with bright, buzzing fluorescent light.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “We were all set to call out the cavalry, pushin’ Vince to get a sketch artist, remember? Then Vince tells us to talk to the vic first, get the whole story before we start draftin’ help. And what happened next? The vic turned us on to that dental angle, we followed it up and made the case.”

  “Okay,” Priscilla said with a nod. “And this is like that how?”

  Rizzo looked around the garage. No car was present on the worn, oil-stained concrete floor, the parking area surrounded by sundry family items and outdoor furniture stored for winter.

  “We’re doin’ it by the book, Cil. Bein’ thorough. Just because Carbone told us there’s nothing here but copies of manuscripts don’t necessarily make it so. Let’s take a look and make sure.”

  He turned to face her. “Thoroughness,” he said. “Ga-peesha?”

  “Yeah, Joe,” she said. “I ga-peesh.”

  Minutes later, the two detectives were seated on the cold concrete floor, another old suitcase open before them. They leafed slowly through its contents.

  Rizzo thumbed through a thin, weathered manuscript, the pages stapled together. He knitted his brows.

  “Hey, Cil,” he said. “In that other suitcase, the one we found at Lauria’s place, were there any plays?”

  Priscilla looked up from the book-length manuscript she was examining, a duplicate of one she had seen at Lauria’s.

  She shook her head. “No. Why?”

  Rizzo held the pages in his hand out to her. “Look at this,” he said. “It’s a play Lauria wrote. I didn’t see anything like this in his closet.”

  Priscilla took the script from him and skimmed through some pages. Minutes later, she whistled softly and raised her eyes.

  “Jesus,” she said. “This is strange.”

  “What?” Rizzo asked, looking up from another manuscript.

  “This play, the play that wasn’t in the suitcase in Lauria’s apartment.” She held it out to him.

  Rizzo dropped the papers he’d been examining onto the floor and took the play back from Priscilla and began to read.

  “What about it?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure. Give me a few minutes, let me read this from page one.”

  “Knock yourself out,” Rizzo replied, shrugging. “I’ll write up my notes on the Carbone interview while you read.” He handed the stack of pages back to Priscilla.

  After twenty minutes, Priscilla called to him, her dark eyes wide and sparkling in the bright light of the small garage.

  “Remember I told you me and Karen saw that Broadway play, the last play Avery Mallard wrote? The Pulitzer Prize winner who was murdered eleven, twelve days ago?”

  Rizzo’s eyes narrowed. He dropped his gaze from Priscilla and looked down to the pages in her hand.

  “Yeah, I remember that.”

  Priscilla laid a hand on his forearm. She leaned in closer.

  “This is the fuckin’ play,” she said. “The same play me and Karen saw on Broadway.”

  She pointed to the top page of the script. “Look at the date, Joe.”

  Rizzo looked to the inscription in what he recognized to be Lauria’s handwriting, then raised his eyes to meet hers. “Over three years ago,” he said.

  “I’m almost sure of this,” she said. “The characters have different names, there’s no love interest like the Mallard play has, and it’s set in New York, not Atlanta. But it’s the same story, the same conflicts, the same ending. Hell, even a lot of the same dialogue.” She handed it to Rizzo. “That in your hand is Mallard’s play, Joe.”

  Rizzo fingered the pages. “Or, if you’re right, Mallard’s play is Lauria’s.” His eyes narrowed. “What the fuck, Cil?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. But I’ve read about Mallard. He came off a long dry spell with this play. He told Charlie Rose he wrote it over a two-month span while he was in the Hamptons, maybe two years ago. Those pages in your hand are dated a year earlier than that. Shit, the play’s only been runnin’ a couple of months, three at the most.”

  Rizzo scratched his head, then rubbed at his right eye to soothe the nervous tic as he spoke.

  “Coincidence? One play. Two separate murders within a few days of each other. Maybe both vics tied to the play.”

  He touched lightly at Priscilla’s cheek.

  “There ain’t no coincidences like that, Partner,” he said.

  Then, reaching for the last of his cigarettes, he dropped the play back into the open suitcase.

  “No fuckin’ way,” he said.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  RIZZO AND JACKSON GAZED THROUGH the windshield at the choppy, white-capped waters of Jamaica Bay. The Impala sat parked in the sprawling, nearly deserted parking area of the Canarsie Pier. Rizzo had sat silently as Priscilla Jackson gave the play a fast, careful reread.

  Having given the reluctantly cooperative Mrs. Carbone a written receipt, they had removed the suitcase from the garage, and it was now secured in the Impala’s trunk.

  The car’s heater blew warm air against their legs, chilling winds howled softly outside the tightly closed windows. Light snow flurries danced across the gray hood.

  “Now I’m sure of it,” Priscilla said quietly, coming to the last page and resting the manuscript on the steering wheel. “With a few changes this is the play I saw on Broadway. What are the possibilities here, Joe?”

  “Top of my head? Mallard somehow plagiarizes the play from Lauria. Lauria calls him on it, and Mallard goes to Lauria’s place, strangles him, searches the apartment, and takes every copy of the play he finds.”

  “So you honestly figure this Pulitzer Prize winner was capable of strangling somebody to death?” Priscilla asked.

  Rizzo laughed. “Yeah, well, think about this. Yasser Arafat won a fuckin’ Nobel Peace Prize.” He paused. “You think maybe he had any blood on his hands, Partner?”

  “Okay, so then who kills Mallard?”

  Rizzo shrugged. “Somebody who knew the situation, somebody who knew about the play
and figured Mallard whacked Lauria. Somebody close to Lauria.”

  She shook her head. “There was nobody close to Lauria, ’cept Carbone. You can’t figure her for a murderer. She just wasn’t the type.”

  “Yeah, well, Carbone’s husband looked clean, too. Maybe this brother she claims is in Kuwait.” He shook his head. “That’s unlikely, though. It would have to be somebody else, somebody we don’t know exists yet. Everybody’s got somebody. Maybe even this guy Lauria.”

  “I don’t know, Joe,” she said. “Sounds pretty freakin’ weak to me.”

  “Don’t it, though?” said Rizzo, reaching for a Nicorette. “But you never know. We gotta dig deeper into the vic’s life. Turn up an old buddy, maybe a butt-buddy, or some screwy writer Lauria hung around with. Somebody.”

  Priscilla wrinkled her brow. “How ’bout this?” she speculated. “Lauria was frustrated and bitter from years of failure. He sees Mallard’s play, writes almost a carbon copy, changing it just enough to make it look legit. He types it on some old paper, dates it three years ago. Then he tries to run a swindle on Mallard, says Mallard plagiarized his play. Tries to get Mallard to use his connections and get Lauria published somehow.”

  Rizzo followed through. “Yeah, they have an argument and Mallard kills the guy. Okay. But then who kills Mallard?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Your phantom butt-buddy, I guess.”

  Rizzo placed the gum in his mouth, chewing it slowly before responding.

  “Or maybe it is just some coincidence—not the murders, the plays. Maybe each guy wrote his play in de pen dent of the other, but Lauria figured Mallard stole his idea, and it all led to the murders.”

  “No way,” Priscilla said. “The two plays are absolutely the same. I’m tellin’ you, not in a million years could two strangers write two such similar works. No freakin’ way.”

  Rizzo nodded. “Okay, so maybe they weren’t strangers to each other. We gotta look at Avery Mallard’s life. See where it intersects with Lauria’s. Look for someone they both knew.”

  “If their lives intersect,” she said. “Do you remember any of the details of Mallard’s murder, Joe?”

  “Not really. I only read one news article about it. I’m pretty sure it happened in his apartment. And, now that I think about it, it mighta been a stranglin’.”

  Priscilla sat back, facing Rizzo, her shoulders against the driver’s window.

  “Jesus Christ, Joe, if that’s true, and the murders are connected, we got us some doozy here—and just one killer.”

  Rizzo smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “A real doozy.”

  “We can check online for the articles. Get more info on the Mallard case.”

  “Fuck online. You forget we got us a pal over at the Plaza? Pretty Boy McQueen? Mike could run inside access computer checks and pull up the whole Mallard investigation. We can look over Manhattan South’s shoulder, see what the college boys and girls been doin’ with the case. Get all the contact info we need.”

  Priscilla’s lips compressed tightly before she spoke again.

  “Yeah. I forgot about Manhattan South.” She paused. “What’s the protocol here? Are we supposed to tell them about this Lauria angle?”

  Rizzo shrugged. “Probably. If we develop it any further, definitely.”

  “Shit,” she said dejectedly. “They’ll grab the two cases and send us both out for coffee.”

  Rizzo raised his brow. “Not if I don’t let ’em, they won’t.”

  “What you got in mind, Partner?” Priscilla questioned.

  He reached out and gently patted her arm. “Makin’ you a star, kiddo—and me, too. If this Lauria case is related to Avery Mallard’s murder, we can run with this ball pretty far before we gotta worry about any ‘protocol.’ Pretty damn far.”

  “How smart is that?” she asked.

  “Well, you know it could backfire, bite us real bad if we fucked it up. But we’re too sharp to fuck it up.”

  “It can do more than bite us, Joe,” she said. “We sit on this link and get found out, we could be looking at an obstruction charge. That’s no joke.”

  “Obstruction? Who are we obstructin’? We are the fuckin’ cops, Cil. We can’t obstruct ourselves.”

  She shook her head. “Please, don’t fuck with me. You know what I’m sayin’ here. We deliberately conceal this link between the two homicides, they can nail us for obstruction and official misconduct.”

  “Relax, okay? Nobody’s nailin’ us for nothing. Hell, if you hadn’t seen that play with Karen, we never would’ve made the connection. And besides, it’s nothing but speculation so far. Let’s take a look, nose around a little, that’s all I’m saying. A couple of unlikely misdemeanor charges shouldn’t right away put our tails between our legs. Let’s just look into it.”

  She considered it. “How about this, Joe? How about while we’re ‘considering’ it, the killer strikes again? Suppose it is the same guy who whacked Lauria and Mallard? We don’t know why, other than maybe something connected to the play. There could be a third party somewhere, some other big shot like Mallard or another schmo like Lauria, and the killer decides to get rid of them, too. That makes us accessories. Accessories to fuckin’ murder. Think about that.”

  Rizzo shrugged. “Million-to-one shot. Besides, if the killer had a third target, it’s already too late. He took out Lauria and Mallard within a day or two of each other. I don’t think he’s been sitting on his hands for two fuckin’ weeks to take out a third guy. If there was another party, he’s dead already. Done deal.”

  She sat silently fingering the pages she held.

  “It’d be blood on our hands if it did happen, Joe,” she said after a moment. “Even if we never got jammed up for it, it would still be blood on our hands.”

  Rizzo turned in his seat and faced his young partner. A tired smile came to him. “Cil, listen to me. I’ve been doing this a lot of years. Now I’m near the end. I been laboring in obscurity for a long time, just the way I wanted it. No flashy squad, no silk stocking precinct, just me and Brooklyn, for better or worse. And I managed to build a solid rep anyway. Cops all over the city have heard of me and all the bosses know how good I am at this, but you know what, Cil? It’s gettin’ a little old for me. Sometimes, lately, I kinda feel like I’m the greatest chef in … in Ireland. At the end of the day, nobody really gives a damn who boiled the fuckin’ potatoes.

  “But … if we develop this, if we tie into Mallard, break that case, I go out on the A-list.”

  Rizzo leaned close to her. “And you. What about you? Your stock goes way up. You’d have the friggin’ politicians tripping over their mistresses rushin’ to get you promoted. You could call your own tune. Think about it.”

  Priscilla held his dark brown eyes. A moment elapsed.

  “And if somebody else does get killed, Joe. That’d be okay with you?”

  He shrugged. “I explained that already. Nobody else is getting killed. And besides, what do you think, we hand this over to Manhattan South and they solve it in twenty minutes? With the resources Mike can provide us, you and me got the same chance as Manhattan does. Hell, we got a better chance.” He paused and turned back in his seat, once again gazing out at the snowflakes dancing across the car’s hood.

  Priscilla spoke to his profile. “Because you’re smarter than they are. Right?”

  He nodded without turning to her. “Your call, Cil. I’ll leave it up to you. I want to poke around some, see where it goes. I told you why. I’ll leave it up to you.”

  After a long moment, she spoke, her tone pensive. “Okay, Joe. We’ll take a look. But if it’s starts getting heavy, we gotta reconsider.”

  Rizzo reached for his shoulder harness, pulling it forward, securing it.

  “Okay then, let’s go. I’ll tell you how I think we should handle it.”

  “Where to?” she asked, as she turned and secured her own shoulder harness.

  “Well, first, back to Lauria’s place. We need to get that suit
case and the box full of rejection slips. And anything else related to his writing, even that old IBM. It could all be evidence. I want the suitcase dusted for prints, even though we were pawin’ at it without gloves on. Maybe the killer got careless when he searched it for Lauria’s copy of the play and left some prints on it. We have to inventory the contents of both suitcases, the one from the apartment and the one from the garage. Then we’ll secure them in the precinct evidence locker. The chain of possession is fucked up enough already, we gotta start stabilizin’ it, recording everything. So, we’ll go to Lauria’s place, then the precinct.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “But first,” he added, “head back up Rockaway Parkway. Find me a candy store.”

  He smiled into her questioning eyes.

  “I gotta pick up one absolutely last pack of cigarettes.”

  AFTER THEY had secured all the gathered evidence in the precinct’s property locker and were seated at Priscilla’s desk in the squad room, Rizzo asked her for one of the two copies of Lauria’s play she had run off.

  “I guess I’ll have to read this crap,” he said absently. Then he pulled the note pad from his jacket and dropped it onto her desk. “Do me a favor. Contact the Air Force and get confirmation that Carbone’s brother’s been overseas at least the last couple a months. Check if he had any leave in October or early this month. All the names and numbers are in my notes.”

  Priscilla nodded, glancing at the note pad. “Okay, and I’ll call the cousins on Long Island and over in Jersey, size them up a little. Like we did with Carbone and her husband.”

  Rizzo nodded. “All right, thanks. See if they can point us at any other relatives or family friends who mighta had any kinda relationship with Robbie. Anything at all they can add to this.”

  “I’m on it, boss,” she said. Rizzo moved back to his desk, checked his address book, then punched Mike McQueen’s work number into the phone.

  “Comstat, Detective McQueen,” he heard through the line.

  “Hello, Mike, it’s Joe.”

  “Joe, hi, how are you?”