Rizzo’s Fire Read online

  “Is the insurance through an employer?” Rizzo asked.

  The dentist ran his finger across the paper before him. “Yes,” he said, “it appears to be.”

  “Who’s the employer?” Priscilla asked.

  “Gordon’s Sporting Equipment,” Davenport answered, raising his eyes to Priscilla’s. “The big outdoor supplies store.”

  Rizzo nodded. “National chain, I think,” he said. Then, shifting in his seat, he asked, “Any follow-up visits scheduled, Doc? For Jurgens?”

  Again the doctor scanned the file. “Yes. He needs to come in when his permanent crowns are ready. That should be in about two weeks. But I see we have him scheduled for Monday afternoon first.”

  “This coming Monday?” Priscilla asked.

  “Yes,” Davenport said, nodding. “That would be for the chipped incisor.” He looked from one detective to the next. “I need to restore it with a bonded filling.”

  “What time is that appointment, Doctor?” Priscilla asked.

  He frowned. “I’m really not comfortable with all of this, Detective,” he said. “My assistant opened the door here by telling you about his injuries, and I’ve added a bit to that. I’d rather not be involved any further. If you’re thinking about intercepting him when he comes for his follow-up care, I’d really rather you …”

  Rizzo raised a hand in a calming gesture. “Don’t worry, Doc,” he said soothingly. “That’s one way we could do it, but not the only way. We’ve got his address and employer, you don’t need to be involved any further. When he shows up Monday, treat him the same way you normally would. I wouldn’t mention any of this to him, and tell your staff not to, either.”

  Rizzo stood, indicating the interview was over. Jackson rose also.

  “ ’Course,” Rizzo said as he reached across the desk to shake hands, “don’t be surprised if he misses that Monday appointment. He may have a more pressing engagement.”

  *

  THE FOLLOWING afternoon, Thursday, at four o’clock, Joe Rizzo once again worked the phone in the Six-Two detective squad room. After some fifteen minutes, he replaced the black plastic receiver on its cradle and stood. He crossed the room and sat heavily in the chair beside Priscilla’s desk.

  “Just got off the phone with Gordon’s Sporting Equipment,” he told her. “Their corporate office over in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. You ready for this? Our man Jurgens works in the Brooklyn store. Over on Bay and Shore Parkways, right here in the precinct. Gordon’s is big on hunting stuff—rifles, tents, knives, clothes, stuff like that. They’re one of only two places in the whole precinct. Imagine? We’da been showing that artist sketch around, maybe showin’ it to Jurgens himself and askin’ him if he ever saw the guy.” Rizzo laughed. “Who figured the guy worked in a place like that?”

  Priscilla shrugged, a smile touching her lips. “This job stopped surprisin’ me a long time ago,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes I forget how it is.”

  “Did you call over to the place?” she asked.

  Rizzo shook his head. “Didn’t have to. Friggin’ Nazi at corporate was all anxious to show me what good citizens these hunter types are. He went into the company payroll file. Jurgens is scheduled to work till closing to night, nine o’clock.”

  “You wanna make the pinch at the store?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I think. Guy seems to be a boozer, chances are the best time to catch him sober is at work. And he’ll probably be less likely to give us a hard time if he isn’t tanked up. Plus, he may be embarrassed in front of his coworkers and just deny it all and come along quietly.” Rizzo paused for a moment. “Yeah. I think we grab him at work,” he continued. “After we bring him in, we’ll print him and have my buddy Torres compare the partial from the shell casing. That should be the clincher.”

  “Let’s go, then,” Priscilla said. “We take him now, I can run him through Central Booking and still get home by midnight.”

  “What makes you figure I’d stick you with the paperwork?” Rizzo asked lightly.

  “Shit,” said Priscilla, “I never seen an old pro take a collar on straight time. We pinch the guy at ten to night, you’d be shoving me aside for the overtime. But not this early in the tour.”

  “I forget sometimes, Cil,” Rizzo said, “you been on the job for a while.”

  She nodded. “Long enough, brother. Long enough.”

  “You run that DMV?” Rizzo asked.

  “Yeah. Jurgens has a two-year-old black Ford F-one-fifty pickup registered to his home address on Stillwell Avenue.”

  “Good,” Rizzo said. “Another nail in his coffin. You haven’t been out in the field with that gold shield for a full week yet, and you cleared two cases. You’re a friggin’ star already.”

  “We cleared two cases, Joe. And I think it’s you who’s the star.”

  Rizzo laughed. “Yeah. I forget that, too, sometimes. C’mon, let’s go grab this asshole. I got a feelin’ he’s about to lose his God-given right to bear arms.”

  Later, as Priscilla drove the Impala toward the large shopping center that housed Gordon’s Sporting Equipment, Rizzo cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. Priscilla glanced over.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Well,” Rizzo said, wrestling a piece of Nicorette from its packaging and putting it into his mouth. “This guy Jurgens. Chances are he’ll come along nice, like a good boy, but, you never know. He could decide to get stupid. Real stupid.” Rizzo looked at his partner’s profile, his eyes hooded.

  “You up for some shit, Cil?” he asked.

  She blinked hard. “What?” she asked.

  Rizzo shrugged. “Just the two of us. If he wants to rock and roll, we gotta get it done. I’m just sayin’ …”

  She shot him a hard look, her dark eyes blazing.

  “Yeah, Goombah, I hear what you saying. You ever ask Mike that question?”

  Again, Rizzo shrugged. “Not in so many words,” he said mildly.

  “Any of your male partners?” she demanded.

  With a weary smile, Rizzo said, “Yeah, now that you mention it. One or two.”

  Priscilla swung the Impala to the side of the avenue, stopping sharply and slamming it into park. The car rocked against the inertia as she turned to Rizzo.

  “On my worst day,” she said, her eyes hard, “I can kick Mike’s butt and yours, too. Don’t worry ’bout it. Don’t you ever worry ’bout it. And you can just kiss my black ass, Joe, for asking me that question.”

  “Okay, I hear you. Loud and clear.” He leaned toward her and smiled. “You can’t blame a guy for askin’.”

  She shook her head. “Damn,” she said. “You are some piece of work.” She slipped the car into gear and pulled away. “We can handle this dude, Joe,” she said. “I can handle him myself. You just suck on that gum, brother, and chill out.”

  THE SHORE Shopping Plaza was a sprawling, L-shaped complex of stores, built on a landfill that extended into the waters of Lower New York Bay. To the north, the Verrazano Bridge arched over The Narrows, connecting the boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island. The mall housed a huge Pathmark supermarket, a Citibank boasting a drive-thru appendage, a half dozen specialty shops, and the anchor of the complex, Gordon’s Sporting Equipment. The shopping plaza was only a short drive from the Sixty-second Precinct building.

  As she drove across Shore Parkway and prepared to turn left into the complex’s large outdoor parking lot, Priscilla sighed.

  “I got some mixed feelings about this,” she said.

  “About what?” Rizzo asked.

  “About picking up this jackass where he works. I know the guy’s a fool and deserves a kick in the ass, but it’s kinda cold, grabbing him in front of his coworkers.”

  “Better to cuff him in front of the wife and kiddies?” Rizzo asked. “There’s no easy way to do this. Besides, he fucked up, he gets what he earned. End of story. When you were a uniform you made spontaneous collars, usually right at the scene. This is h
ow detectives make arrests.”

  Priscilla shrugged. “I know,” she said. “Just don’t seem right, is all.”

  Rizzo grunted. “Let me explain about that, partner. There is no right. There is no wrong. There just is.”

  She angled the Impala toward Gordon’s, accelerating across the sparsely occupied parking lot.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Mike told me about that. Said it was some of the nonsense your old man handed you when you were a kid.”

  Rizzo opened the glove compartment and reached for his pack of cigarettes.

  “It was my grandfather,” he said. “My old man died when I was nine, so me and my mother and sister moved in with my grandparents. Right here in Bensonhurst, over on Eighty-fourth Street and Seventeenth. Matter a fact, the high school where that guy Jacoby was wavin’ his joint, New Utrecht High, that’s my alma mater.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Priscilla asked, parking the Chevy twenty yards from Gordon’s side entrance doors.

  Rizzo nodded and undid his shoulder harness. “Yeah,” he said. “I went from high school to the army for four years, then into the NYPD.”

  Priscilla put the car into park and shut it down. “I got my associates at Bronx Community, then went on the cops,” she said.

  They climbed out of the car, Rizzo spitting out Nicorette and lighting his Chesterfield. They both leaned against the Chevy as he smoked.

  “So what made you pick the cops, Cil?” he asked. “With me, it was a family thing. My grandfather was a cop for most of his life. I grew up with it. It was all I ever wanted to do. I was even an M.P. when I was in the Army.”

  Priscilla nodded. “Lotsa guys come on the job like that. Me, I was brought up in a pretty fucked-up environment. My mother was wild, drunk, always runnin’ with men.” She turned to Rizzo and smiled sadly. “But I knew this old black beat cop when I was real young. His name was Ted and he always treated me special. Sometimes I would pretend he was my father, bein’ how I never actually knew my real one.” She shrugged. “So I guess, in a way, we got the same reason, kinda a family thing.”

  “Yeah, kinda,” Rizzo said. “But, tell you the truth, if I was a kid now, twenty, twenty-one, I’d never wanna come on this job. It’s apples to oranges from when I started.” He looked out over the flat waters of the bay, nestled under the darkened sky and dragged deeply on the cigarette. “Apples to oranges,” he said again, a wistful note in his voice, an unfamiliar tone to Priscilla’s ear.

  She nodded. “Lots of old-timers feel that way. Down on the job, sayin’ it’s changed, too political, can’t trust nobody, all that. But, you know what, Joe? It’s the times that’ve changed. Some for the good, most for the bad. But the job has always been good for me. Gave me order, structure. Somethin’ to be proud of. I know it can eat people up and spit ’em out—I’ve seen plenty a that—but if you tough it out, it’s meaningful. It’s real, Joe. Real.”

  Now Rizzo, the wise-guy edge back in his tone when he spoke, patted her arm.

  “Yeah,” he said, tossing the cigarette away. “Real. Just keep in mind what my grandfather said. What I say about no right, no wrong. That ain’t nonsense, like you called it. That’s wisdom, kiddo. Wisdom.” He glanced at his watch.

  “Now,” he said, his eyes twinkling under the artificial lights of the parking lot. “Lets us go do something meaningful. Somethin’ real. Let’s go lock up this shit-bag.”

  RIZZO LEANED back casually, resting his shoulders against the stacked boxes behind him. He, Priscilla, the store manager, and a sullen Carl Jurgens were gathered in the stockroom at the rear of Gordon’s Sporting Equipment. After standing in awkward silence for a moment, the manager cleared his throat.

  “Well,” he said, glancing from one to another. “I’ll leave you here, then?” The man, tall and thin, in his mid-thirties, smiled at Rizzo. “If this is okay with you, that is. As I said, if you want more privacy, my office is …”

  Rizzo held up a hand. “This is fine,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “Okay, then,” he said, and left the room quickly, closing the door behind him.

  Rizzo folded his arms across his chest and looked at Jurgens.

  “So, Carl,” he said in a pleasant conversational tone. “Got any idea why we dropped by to see you?”

  The man flushed slightly and avoided eye contact. “No,” he said flatly. “I don’t.”

  Priscilla, to the man’s right, said, “Why don’t you tell us where you were on Monday night? Around nine o’clock.”

  The man glanced nervously at her, then swung his eyes to Rizzo.

  “Sounds like a reasonable question, Carl,” Rizzo said. “Why don’t you answer her?”

  Jurgens looked back at Priscilla, a sheen of perspiration glistening on his forehead. He cleared his throat before answering. “Monday? Monday night?” he asked.

  Priscilla nodded. “Yeah. Monday night. Columbus Day. ’Bout nine o’clock.”

  Jurgens nodded. “Yeah, okay. Monday, Monday night at nine … I was home. With my wife.”

  Rizzo eased away from the boxes, unfolding his arms. “Is that right, Carl? Home with the wife?”

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice gaining strength. “You can ask her. She’ll tell you.”

  Rizzo nodded. “I bet she will, Carl. I bet she will. But you know, your wife might not be gettin’ the whole picture. She may not know that legally, the only right she has is she can’t be forced to testify against you. But she can be charged as an accessory after the fact if she lies to cover for you.”

  Jurgens’s flush deepened. “Accessory to what?” he said. “Cover for what?”

  Rizzo glanced at Priscilla. She looked quickly to Jurgens, saw the anger stirring. Discreetly, she slipped her cuffs from where they were tucked in her belt at the small of her back.

  Rizzo stepped in closer to Jurgens. “Turn around,” he said, his voice deep and threatening. “You’re under arrest.”

  Priscilla moved quickly, cuffing first Jurgens’s right hand, then twisting it to meet his left wrist. She snapped on the second cuff, deftly adjusting its grip. Rizzo ran his hands rapidly over Jurgens’s body, keeping his own left leg angled inward to protect his groin.

  Jurgens blinked in disbelief, straining against the Smith & Wesson handcuffs.

  “Under arrest? What the fuck for?” he stammered.

  Rizzo reached a hand into Jurgens’s front pants pocket, extracting a six-inch folding knife with a scarred bone handle.

  “Two counts of attempted murder, second degree, two counts criminal use of a firearm, two felony counts assault, one misdemeanor count.” Now Rizzo gave a slight smile. “And what ever else the college boy A.D.A. can find in his penal code Cliff notes.”

  Jurgens compressed his lips. “I want a fuckin’ lawyer,” he said. “A lawyer!”

  Priscilla took the knife from Rizzo. “Okay, Carl,” she said. “We heard you.”

  “What’s that?” Rizzo asked Jurgens, indicating the knife.

  The man’s eyes darted to the weapon. “That’s my pocket knife,” he said. “I’m a sportsman.”

  Rizzo nodded his head. “Yeah, Carl,” he said, taking the man by the arm and turning toward the door. “We already figured that out.”

  As they walked him out, Priscilla began Jurgens’s Miranda warning. “You have the right …”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IT WAS ASTONISHING, REALLY. After all the fear, apprehension, and doubt, all the painful reflection.

  The man grunted with satisfaction. Killing, as it had turned out, came easily to him. It was the simple enactment of a well-conceived plan, oddly not unlike any other plan, financial or professional, for instance, one faced as one’s life progressed.

  He looked down at the lifeless mass collapsed at his feet. How strange, he thought, that he had never before realized his capacity.

  Imagine, to have lived a lifetime within the confines of his own consciousness and not have been aware of such a rich and useful resource—the ability to kill without remorse, with
out misguided sympathy, without the inconvenience of weakness or moral dilemma.

  The man’s satisfaction deepened, and he sighed. It was a relief, really. Now he knew, knew without question, that he was capable of doing it, and what’s more, doing it so very easily.

  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.