The Law Fought Me - Ch. 9: THE END

Chapter Nine

Rocco looked over his shoulder carrying a tray of cream with the guilty look of a raggedy dog as I shuffled into the kitchen, at gunpoint of a six-two gun moll–assuming she ever was one.

Don’t say anything, I thought as Eileen Hennessey ordered me to a chair.

I sat in the chair. Rocco spread the cream cheese on the bagel.

“There’s two ways we can do this.” She sat on the other side and took a big chomp out of the bagel. “First, why are you here?”

Bianchi raised a pitcher of orange juice over her glass. “He paid me a few bucks–”

The juice sprayed across my eyes. “Don’t tell ‘er nuttin’!”

Hennessey smiled with lumps of dough in her cheek and kept chewing. “You don’t get to speak, Bianchi. Have a seat.”

I decided my best bet was to seem as incapable as last night. I reached for an empty glass and let my hand shake. “I uh, he paid me a few bucks to watch his back. I don’t know him, but I think I read about him in the papers.”

“So what did he pay you?” She waved Bianchi and the pitcher off.

I reached into my pocket and dumped all the change I had on the table. Hennessey parsed it out on the table cloth, and for a moment I thought maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Bianchi watched standing beside her, hand on the pitcher as if he might be called to service.

“One thirty one. Pennies.”

“Look, I owe some debts.” I laughed. “I woulda only asked for a bottle of rum–By the way, you don’t have anything to drink, do you? Irish coffee?”

She swallowed another chunk and pushed the money over to me, bunching up the table cloth. “You can get in a lot of trouble for helping a fugitive.”

I said nothing.

“More trouble than you’re in now.”

I scratched behind my ear. Bianchi stared across the table, petrified, and I tried not to let that make me hysterical. “Oh?”

“Yes. A loooooong time in the Tombs, for being an accessory, plus aiding and abetting what he happens to be up to now. But we don’t need to worry about that, because you’re going to help me. You can be trusted, and you’re going to help me more than you’ve helped this man here. You’re going to help for fifty dollars.”

Talking in character somehow deflected my fear. “Aaaaaah, I dunno. That’s a lotta money to carry around. Hard to break a bill like that without questions.”

“So I’ll give you ten fives. Will that do?”

“It’s Andy.”

“Tch, please, don’t tell me your name. It will be easier.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.”

She rose out of the chair and licked a blob of cream in the corner of her dry lips. “I’ve got the money in the bedroom. Follow me.”

She didn’t leave the room until I got out of my chair. I moved slowly toward the doorway ahead of her, judging whether as soon as I stepped through if my head would be torpedoed through my shoulders.

Hennessey placed the plate with the bagel on a dresser and dragged a safe from under the bed, which she balanced on the mattress. The pink shaded lamps were dusty, faintly illuminated in early morning light through closed blinds. The sight of that bedroom was enough to cause a dizzy spell, a bad memory, so I grabbed the plate the bagel sat on and smashed it into her face, and then I was booking it out of the apartment down the ascetic blank walls of the massage parlor. The sound of boots followed close behind, accompanied by the sound of heavy panting.

I dove out the front doors, slid down the stone railing, and tumbled off on my head. It throbbed like I had a piece of skull missing behind my ear. It was the most acute headache I’d ever had. I grabbed my hat and ran down the streets to the sound of the door slamming behind me, and the crack of a single gunshot. Had the bullet connected, I might not have known, was how bad my skull hurt. At which point, I escaped my death by the grace of a tight New York alley routing me to many others of its kind.

I shaved, I showered, I had light breakfast: bread with butter, and a little strawberry jam. I even had a glass of juice, and a slug of rum. Thus stabilized, I made my way to 18th West and parked myself on a bench with a fresh newspaper. I read local headlines.

“COP KILLER LOOSE IN NEW YORK”

My friend, Rocco Bianchi. They had him tied to a few killings, and postulated a connection to a few more that I at least knew were dubious.

I tried not to get too caught in the tales of how the cops were doing their damndest to catch him: witness reports, door to door questions, police patrols, APBs on his accomplices, neighborhood watches, buddy systems when walking at night, and articles denouncing “the phenomenon of youth raising a cop killer to the status of folk hero.”

“Amen,” I said.

Several persons, primarily the local youth, were attempting to lead police on in several purposeless chases after implying they were covering for Bianchi. The police seemed in denial that such a thing could occur. They were sick over it.

“The longer he’s on the streets, the worse it gets. The kids think he’s a hero for defying authority. He’s not. He’s a murderer. Hauser had a wife and kids. They should be rooting for the men who are keeping dangerous killers like Bianchi off the street and protecting their families from falling victims to a horrible crime like this. It sickens me to see children and parents alike rallying support for murder.”

So said some veteran cop that flew over Okinawa, and dropped a few payloads, most definitely.

I couldn’t help but smile, smile. It was so phony and self-righteous I couldn’t see how the public could side with them. Sure, a cop killer on the loose. But how many responsible people really wanted him to get away with it and never be caught, just for the hell of it?

Maybe it’s the criminal heart in me that loves to see crimes go unpunished, if I happen to sympathize. So Officer Hauser’s dead. He’s gone, the chase is more about catching the bastard than about this concept of justice. Letting Bianchi slip through their fingers is the worst crime he’s committed. I saw the family grieve. Hauser, so I’m told, drew first on an unarmed man with his back half turned. Sure Bianchi had finished up a robbery, but the threat had passed, and anyway I didn’t really give a damn. I didn’t believe Bianchi committed the Bembo murder and jewel theft, only a regular theft and a self defense murder of a cop who was probably a trigger happy asshole. I didn’t know him. Let him run. Let him run as far as he can. Bianchi can take the whole idea of the Bembo case with him, let the NYPD pick up the pieces. It’s none of his business really, but the more he digs, the better Vaness’ chance of staying free is. Let him run amok, killing dirty lawyers and killers. I don’t care. I want him on the lam.

Outside the 18th West train stop, a car parked along the curb, and from my bench I watched Eileen Hennessey climb out and make a big scope of the area. I read on.

When she was well out of sight, Bianchi hopped out and ran to a nearby payphone. I got up and walked over. As he got in, I crept up behind him with the newspaper. When he saw me over his shoulder he reached into his trenchcoat, though it hadn’t rained for days. I lowered the paper and he flung open the door.

“Didn’t recognize you without an obnoxious tie. What?”

“So you still have the gun.”

He took his hand out of the coat. “What? Me?" He took his hand out of the coat. “That’s what you’re for." He patted his coat. “Nah, dummy left it in the glove compartment as a sign of trust. Now get outta here. I gotta set this up before she gets back.”“Now get outta here. I gotta set this up before she gets back.”

I stepped back, folding the newspaper under one arm. “I’ll cover you.”

Bianchi dialed. When he got on the line, he looked real pleased. “Lieutenant Carbone… Bonjourno. It’s your friend, Rocco. Doncha know me?” He smiled. “By the time you trace it, I won’t be here, copper. I got the woman in the Bembo case. Yeah, me. She’s at a locker at the 18th West subway right now. If you hurry, you might catch her. Arrivederci.”

He slammed the phone which bounced off and waved across the floor by the coiled wire. He laughed. “If you’re ever in Colombia, give me a call.” He hobbled past. 

A voice on the phone pleaded for information dumbly at the floor. I got in the booth and lifted the receiver.

“You can still surrender,” Carbone insisted. “Bianchi?”

I was smart enough not to say anything to him. Outside the booth, Bianchi climbed into the car. The line went dead, and I pressed the cradle to make sure nobody could listen.

“Yes,” I said to myself, “I might be late for work for inconsequential reasons. Talk, talk, talk.” I glanced at the car and saw Eileen Hennessey boarding the driver’s side. “Blah, blah…”

They seemed to be discussing something.

A woman came up to the booth, a shabbily dressed working girl. I sighed and pretended to hang up so I wouldn’t keep her waiting around for me to finish saying, “Blah, blah, blah,” to my imaginary confidante.

“Scorcher today,” she said as I passed.

I rotated my arms in my shoulder sockets. “Oh, this is nothin’. I’m used to rationing my canteen between me and my mule in the Sahara.”

It was a joke she didn’t get. I could tell she thought I was nuts from her pretended smile as she drew the door closed and leaned on it to keep it that way.

I got myself another bench with a better angle through the rear window of Hennessey’s generic black sedan, nicely polished.

Bianchi’s head strained to one side like he’d been hit between the knees, and a minute later he was shambling out with Hennessey close behind. Together they went down into the subway, below the streets, far from help.

Well, that’s bad news. If he turned her in he won’t want to be inches in front of her when she gets nabbed.

I crammed the paper into my inner suit pocket and followed them underground.

The smell of garbage hit me as I descended the concrete steps. There was a burst bag around the corner, which had nothing to do with anything, but otherwise I noticed nothing out of the ordinary. It was pretty busy at rush hour. A well-dressed crowd waiting for the train, a man at the the lost and found.

Bianchi now walked through the turnstiles like a condemned man. He hesitated on the other side, and Hennessey gently shoved him ahead. I couldn’t hear his protests as they crossed the underground. He strolled toward some lockers. Greedily, Hennessey passed him and worked on the dial of a top locker.

I decided not to let my stinginess compromise my mission and dropped a nickel to get through. Bianci drifted by a steel column. I drifted toward him.

The man by the lost and found counter whirled around and before I could figure out his problem he was wrestling with Eileen Hennessey–an arrest. I hesitated, wondering the hell I was going to do and clapped Bianchi–to his surprise–on the shoulder to run.

Whatever I told him, I don’t remember. Something like, “Just run toward Canada–it’s closer.”

The scuffle grated my nerves all down my spine as Eileen struggled over the pistol with the everyday dick. Anticipating disaster, I turned towards the turnstiles flooded with shouts and the tense expressions of commuters–only for Carbone to break through and vault the pinnacle of the turnstile, in the air like an Olympian hurdler, when BANG–my boss, my friend, cut at the peak of his vault over that ordinary of subway mechanisms, fell, collapsed, clutching his torso or somewhere, and hit the concrete with such inhumane bleak force that I stopped, seeing him in pain on that concrete bleeding. I glanced up and saw Shok–his long grey face like a photograph staring at the camera before he pushed through to comfort, clutch, stanch the wound of Carbone, and me I pushed through the turnstile, and much like Bianchi must have blended into the crowd on my way up. Nobody stopped me, but as I went up those smelly concrete tiled steps I hardly thought or felt a thing. Carbone–shot–on the pavement–

I replayed it–like nothing around me was real. Shok: he saw or looked at me–but did he make a connection or–? He had more dire things to attend to–

What… have I done?

So dramatic but real. I kept walking thinking this. Make a turn, cross the street when the lights were… I caught a bus going somewhere.

It’s not that I caused it…

I walked home–where else–but it felt I’d made the wrong decision… I hadn’t wanted to go home alone–skipping work–if Shok saw me–which he did–

At my apartment, or the APT as I envisioned it in my mind all the time, nothing was wrong, all was the same brick exterior. The smell of good cooking in the main stairwell as I climbed up, feeling hungry for lunch–nevermind work–Carbone–who would come in? Why–

Why was I going home, I could ask myself.

Rounding the staircase to the second story, a wallop of that rank green smell hit me.

Reefers? The Chinese couple?

I unlocked my apartment, deciding I might believe it, when who did I see, sitting, camped against the wall with a lit cigarette, stale smoke, hunched on the floor in a green sequin jumpsuit?

“What the–?”

But what she says is, “Lynn they picked up while I was at the corner store buying–” she glanced up at me. “Some makeup.”

“Some makeup?” Me, not comprehending her: sitting, smoking: Emerald Norval.

“Yeah, a… some female necessities.”

“Oh.”

Stunned, mute, I turned the key in my APT door.

We went inside. She slipped past me, as I was nearly unalive, a mannequin unmoveable, at the threshold of my abode, and she goes on:

“It’s awful sticky outside, I’ve been wearing this getup for days–”

I go around the apartment, I’m doing something like picking out a proper suit for work, Emerald leans in my bedroom doorway:

“I said, doesn’t Vaness ever leave any clothes?”

I merely glanced at her, laid out clean socks. I hadn’t done that this morning.

Emerald sunk her hip to one side, leaning on the doorframe. “A virgin. How quaint,”

I realized I was packing, starting with the socks, and calmly unlaced my shoes and switched socks to pretend that’s all I had meant to do.

Emerald eyed them as I pulled on my brown shoes. “What, did your feet wet themselves?”

As I pulled my laces together, no response came to mind, but I raised an eyebrow to be sociable.

“When we dumped Rocco, he said he was going to meet somebody,” she said, “And since it isn’t Lynn, it must be that cheesecake he’s seeing now. I have to give him some money, and once I slap sense into her it’ll be just me and Rocco sailing toward Havana.”

Yeah, on a homemade raft.

I was on my feet, feeling more lucid. “Where is he? You want me to take you there?”

“I wouldn’t object to it, that’s what you mean.”

That’s it: I either turn her in and get on with my career, or pack my suitcase and run like hell. Why not? What the hell. I’ve run too many times before. I brushed past Emerald, got a bottle of rum out of a cabinet, and poured myself a slug. Emerald watched, so I thought–well–and poured a second slug. I pushed it across the table at her.

“Know where Bianchi would be?”

“Pssh–I wrestled out of him he’s meeting his girl”–“girl” in heavy condescension–”At a church.” She tapped the shot glass to the table and downed it. “Yeah, I know what church. Fine–I’ll take you there. I don’t have many other options. Hell, he better… You know, why does he go for her anyway? I mean I don’t know her but what the hell, what does she have I don’t twenty times over? I look at myself in the mirror: I’m attractive, I’m kinda what they say, ‘cute,’ but does Rocco ever think twice? No. He’s a goddamn little jerk. He doesn’t look back, no matter how beautiful the view in his rearview. Sorry, I had a few sticks to smoke before you got here.”

“How many fit in your purse?” I mumbled.

Emerald didn’t respond or hear. She looked down vaguely, sulking. “I’m not upset, really.”

“Where’s this church?”

“They’re meeting hours from now.” She lifted my bottle of rum. “We may as well r’lax.”

“Fine, go ahead and kill the bottle–”

“But it’s half full?”

I grabbed it from her and took enough of a slug that it dribbled on my chin, then slammed it roughly on the table and headed out the door.

“You’re not going to do something stupid are you?”

I ran my hand through my hair and replaced my hat. “You said yourself the meeting is in a few hours. So wait.” 

The office above the police station was sanctimoniously quiet. Lieutenant Carbone was well-respected in his precinct. Word had gone through the wires to the secretaries, but the gears of justice must turn, and most of the desks were occupied. I asked a woman where O’Grady might be. She only looked up, surprised. So I drifted to the office. There were some notes laying on Carbone’s desk. I dug deeper and took out everything on the suspects: Emerald Norval, Bianchi, Vaness. And the copies.

I stuffed it all in a spare carrying case in my desk and walked out the door with irreplaceable evidence. On my way out, I stopped a secretary who’d I’d seen talk to Carbone once or twice. She knew the hospital where they were keeping him. So I went to the street and hailed a cab.

At the hospital, the nurse told me I’d just missed Detective Shok on his way up. Carbone was no longer critical, but unless I had urgent business, he could use the rest. Before I could make up my mind to flee, the nurse said, “Detective Shok, we were just talking about you.”

A grey figure paused near the counter, blank. He spoke as if asleep. “He’s not there.”

“Pardon me, sir?”

His temper flared up. “He’s not there, dammit. No one’s in the room!”

The nurse still wasn’t digesting his words. “Room 45?”

“Yes, room 45. It’s empty. He must have upped and walked out right over your nose. The nurse who took me up is running around like a chicken without a head as we speak.”

Detective Shok noticed me standing there and carved my heart out with the expression of hatred on his face. Then I knew he'd seen me in the subway for sure, though he seemed to hate me on all levels, under any circumstance. I occasionally had that effect on men, and it tended to prove disastrous.

The nurse asked Shok to show her the room. I figured with no patient to disturb and my presence blown, there was no reason not to investigate myself. We went up together and stared at a bed with the blankets tossed aside and no Carbone. The nurse double-checked the number outside the door. I debated checking under the bed. I’d done it myself, once.

“I suppose this makes you happy,” Detective Shok grumbled. “What sick perversion brought you here?”

“Same as yours, to see if he was breathing.”

“You’ve seen. So now what?”

“He was here at four-thirty, sleeping,” said the nurse, picking up Carbone’s hat. “He was under sedation not a few hours ago.”

Another nurse appeared in the doorway, the one who had taken Shok up. “He’s nowhere to be found,” she said, “With all that blood loss, I don’t know how he’d have the strength to stand!”

“The man has the will to move mountains,” I said. “At least he didn’t bust out a window.”

Shok yanked a phone off a cradle and gave headquarters the skinny. The two nurses went out to notify the brass about the escaped patient, and left us alone in that dim room together.

Shok hung up and gave me a long look.“ Just for jolly, I might arrest that accomplice girlfriend of yours.” Shok watched my reaction and laughed slowly. “I guess you do care about somebody other than yourself. Unless you only care about getting caught. And I can make her talk, believe me, I can.”

“If you really want to know what I was doing this morning, you can ask.”

“Yeah, and you’d tell me the God-honest truth, too. Save it for the worms, I gotta find Carbone before he finds himself another bullet.”

I paused at the door. “Please, after you.”

Schok offered me a ride in the squad car. I couldn’t tell if he was joking. He convinced me, “This way, we search together, I can keep an eye on you.” As he opened the door for me, he said, “By the way, don’t bother calling up your girlfriend to compare stories. I’ve got her in lockup and I intend to keep her there the maximum 72 hours.” When I turned to look at him, he leered, mouth creasing obscenely like ripped parchment. “O’Grady’s handling her now. Gently, to your relief and my disappointment. But I'll get my turn. The important thing is we’ll let her go. Circumstantial evidence isn’t firmed up and ready yet.”

He stood with his hand thrust in his pocket, holding his jacket to expose the gun in his shoulder holster. It made me uncomfortable, like an open fly.

“Where do ya think he could have gone? Your boss? After Bianchi, one hundred percent, but where he is, you have some ideas, maybe.” He rested his hand on the passenger door and nodded into the car. “Go on, sit up front.”

I did. A dumb concession for loss of confidence. If I had any criminal mind I should have reached for the gun and done away with him right then, but maybe that’s exactly what he wanted me to try.

We rolled through downtown. The sunset hemorrhaged through slits in the skyscrapers.

Shok drove slowly into the bowels of an alley, took his foot off the gas, and let the car stop completely. Everything in that alley was grey–the gravely road, the dirt, the bits of trash fluttering from uncovered metal cans–and more polished than the dirty metal cans was the metal pistol drawn from Shok’s shoulder holster into my face.

“Where is Bianchi?”

I waited for him to put it away, laugh sinisterly, and claim it was a joke. It was too unambiguous. It broke the rules of the game.

This time spittle flew from his lips. “Where is he?!”

My heart jumped and began hammering and my thoughts were a slew of curse words. Shok pressed the barrel on the bridge of my nose, and it was warm from sitting under his arm. He was primed to give me an express lobotomy. It’s over, I remember thinking, I made my last mistake, it’s over. A cool sense of calm washed over me, and I relaxed in the seat. No need to sweat, I can knock it aside easily, or it’s not loaded, or I die. I’d narrowed my fate to three distinct paths.

Shok hadn’t read my resignation. He exploded in a slew of abuses that I wouldn’t repeat to my worst enemy, mostly on account of personal moral standards. “You think you’re the kind of You’re so goddamn enamored with yourself you can’t see when there’s a .32 on the bridge of your nose, prepared to launch a bullet sized trail of brain spaghetti out the backside of your skull!”

He lifted the .32 and struck me across the face for emphasis. I hadn’t a lot of room to dodge, so it hit me pretty bad on the side of my head a few inches below my other bruise sustained on the sidewalk outside Madame Massage’s parlor of fat kneading. Shok placed the nozzle on the bridge of my nose to turn my head to face him. “Ready to chat now, pal?” He threw in another unmentionable. As I was formulating a response, he said, “Okay, I’ll talk for you. I’ll let you know what I think. Somewhere along the way you got in with Rocco Bianchi, maybe you helped him push the jewels before that, I dunno. Any way you look at it, you’ve been helping him evade us the last few days, and now… Either that or your FBI, deep under cover, and there’s some angle to this case that I don’t know, and you ain’t tellin’. Or you're just so goddamn stupid, you got yourself hopelessly tangled in crime to keep your squeeze from getting thrown in the slammer for helping out her ex? Some variation on that theme? If you don’t like a gun in your face, help a pal out and start talking.” He added a shortened demand with a few more unprintable expressions and insults.

“Okay, Shok, okay…” I took some steadying breaths. “I’ll forgive all the names you called me and even my new bruise if you won’t interrupt. I didn’t ever want to be in this situation, but now I have no choice, so I’ll tell you the truth, though it’ll be terrible for me and the fate of the case. I know Carbone would want you focused on the case wherever he is to help him out.”

I took a deep breath.

“You weren’t wrong. I have been a part of this case far more than any detective’s secretary should logically be. And a male secretary to boot. You were right to be suspicious. This case has been a tangled, muddled mess, and the reason why is one of the suspects is involved in crimes similar to this one, in other states, across the country. Lebanon, Tennessee. Texarkana, Texas side, and in Hoboken.” I didn’t die, so I went on, “I was assigned to Carbone’s office several months ago, when we heard–”

“Hoboken? From Texarkana to Hoboken?”

“I didn’t say I was tracking Bianchi. We know he’s lived here his whole life.” In my hour of need, I recalled Carbone’s files on the case. “Brock Lumsden used to live down south. We believe he’s part of a ring, primarily concerned with expensive jewels. The Bembo collection was on our radar, among others. We thought he’d slip up in New York, and we were right. However, we know he didn’t do it alone, and we know he had other help in other cases.”

Shok relaxed his grip, taking the barrel a fifth of an inch away from my skull. “You expect me to believe…”

“I’m not supposed to tell you this, even Carbone.”

I had passed the line beyond the farthest reaches of BS.

“Where’s your badge?”

“I’m undercover. If that was found on me, it’d be lights out, señor.”

“Take me to Bianchi, officer.”

He still hated me. That was good. For him to turn sweet would mean he intended to kill me very soon. Better sign, he lowered his gun and stepped out of the patrol car. I got behind the wheel, and Shok boarded the passenger side, holding the gun at my hip. I would take that over the bridge of my nose any time.

My next do-or-die was whether or not to take him to my apartment, to pick up Emerald Norval and get her arrested for her information. It was her or me. What else was I supposed to do? I drove toward my apartment. I didn’t tell him where we where headed. That didn’t seem much like a G-man mode of conduct.

Shok started asking questions a minute later. If he was worried I was leading us to a shootout, he might get itchy with the gun.

“My apartment.” Shok twitched in his seat, about to bark or bite me. “He’s not there,” I added quickly. “My means of finding out is there.”

“Save the BS for when we get there. I can only stomach it in small, bite-sized, incremental amounts.”

He laid it on thick.

I rolled up down the street from my apartment, so as not to scare Emerald off. This was a monumental goof. The whole plan was loony. I turned to Shok, who had some minutes ago re-holstered his .32.

“It’s incredibly necessary that I go in alone. I have a contact, but I need to get the contact to tell me, and I promised I would be back and ready to go to the place where the contact knows Bianchi is located.”

“Stop talking in circles. Who’s your contact?”

“Emerald Norval.”

He trilled his lips. “I’ll pull the car out of sight and wait, in case you decide to run off together. What direction do you expect to follow?”

If I dropped we were looking for a church, he might know exactly where to head without me. “Not sure. She hasn’t even hinted.”

“How do you know she’s still there?”

I shrugged. “Incidentally, do you mind if I leave my suitcase with you? She might think it’s important.”

“Hell do I care." He tossed me the keys. “Lock it in the trunk.”

Emerald was nowhere to be seen, so I went to my bedroom. Somehow I expected her to be laying on my bed. I wasn’t expecting her to be in her lingerie, idly shelling out a deck of cards on either side of her legs.

I turned to the kitchen and poured myself another slug of rum.

“I washed my jumpsuit and hung it over your tub to dry. Don’t get any noble ideas.”

I kept my back to the doorway and set down the shot. I checked my watch.

“I could use that church name about now.”

I heard a sigh as she slid off the bed. “There is this new gimmick called catching your breath once in a while.”

I started to feel nauseous and rummaged for snacks. Her body flashed beside me as I voraciously ate crackers.

“For the love of God,” I said, “put on some of my clothes.”

“He won’t even look at me,” she said, “If you’re so Christian, why don’t you ask God to tell you which House of Jesus he’s in.”

“You make it sound like a chain restaurant.” I turned around. She scowled up at me, then raised an eyebrow. I gestured to the bedroom and shoved another cracker in my mouth.

“Normally that would be a come on, but in your case, I know better.” She slammed the bedroom door.

I was about to cut myself off when I realized the bottle was empty. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. I remembered her purse full of marijuana, complete with a pistol and ran around the apartment, checking under furniture. She opened the door. The purse was on her arm. It took great will to hold onto my stomach contents.

There are better ways of confronting an armed individual on the lam than drunk with his ex-girlfriend crossdressing in my clothes, high as a church steeple.

Personally, I dislike carrying guns. It’s bad enough killing people, worse advertising to yourself that you’re ready to do it at any given moment. I liked to pretend to myself and others that I was a spotless civilian, with nothing to hide and no reason to kill.

Unfortunately, I needed Emerald’s gun. If or when Shok arrests her, my G-man story is going to hell, but it need not be worse. This was all a minute at a time–if I weren’t drunk with no concept of time. All the while we were walking, her in a black fedora, loud tie, and oversized suit, I had to keep screaming to myself not to turn around and look for Shok’s squad car and not blow the entire thing–whatever the hell it was I was doing. In my paranoia, I completely forgot to maneuver Emerald’s gun away from her whatsoever.

I lurched up the steps of the church, hit my elbow on a font of holy water and swooned down the aisle, make-believing I wasn’t the loudest thing in a thirty yard radius. Some old women sat up front, and I remembered to take off my hat and hide my face behind it.

Emerald made believe her own game, waiting outside to jump Bianchi should the lout show up. I expected Shok had cuffed and thrown her in the backseat already.

I made it to the confessional booth. Bianchi was not in there. I hadn’t stepped foot in one in over four years. I quietly closed the door in on myself and waited. It was muggy inside.

After some minutes, footsteps clacked across the church: women’s heels. It could have been Emerald, but a voice said in response, very near to me, “You’re here,” a soft voice that had no businesses sounding that way: Bianchi’s. Who knows when he got in.

He added, “Come with me.”

“Where are you going?” said a light feminine voice.

“Cuba, Havana, anywhere but the States. No one will ever find us.”

“Rocco… I can’t.”

“They’re not after you, remember. You won’t have to worry.”

“That’s not it. Rocco, people are saying horrible things,”

“Don’t believe the papers, baby, they want you to turn on me.”

“But–they say you killed people.”

“Is this about the lawyer, Fates? He threatened your life, and he nearly took mine. I had to.”

“But the policeman–”

“Self-defense. He shot first. C’mon baby, none of that will matter when we leave this crappy sewer hole. It’ll be us and only us. We love each other, you know that will be enough.”

“Rocco, I can’t. It’s not right.” She began crying quietly.

In the quiet, Rocco said, “It’s alright, I understand. It’s that you’re the only one left. Even my mother turned on me when she found out my brother slipped me a can of beans and a spoon through the back door same time Carbone was knocking at the front. But you never did. Everywhere I went, I thought about you. You kept me strong, despite the pain in my leg and all the freaks trying to cook me–without you I’m finished. A shell. Dead.”

“Rocco, please don’t torture me…”

“Please, baby. Come with me.”

A door clattered right beside me, so I looked through the slats. Carbone faced Bianchi, his shoulder blocking the face of a young woman in a veil sitting in the pew with him.

“She’s not going anywhere with you, Rocco,” he said.

Damn, I thought, popping open the confessional, Carbone had been hiding on the priest’s side of the confessional booth the whole time. Now I felt like a drunk idiot.

“She is,” said Rocco, “We’re going.”

“No. You are. She’s not. Not when she knows about you.”

Bianchi stood up and reached into his trenchcoat. “She knows. And she’s coming with me.”

“No need. I’m alone.” Carbone’s face was drenched in sweat. He wore his coat buttoned over an undershirt, his hair was messed up, the gelled hair stringy. He allowed a smile. “So you confessed to her. This is a good place for that. You told her everything. She knows you killed two men, but what about the others? Edwinton the trusty who’ll take seven years for helping you escape jail? Does she know about Lynn? The girl who sheltered you? She’ll serve hard time. And so will Doctor Benoit. Tell her about the children who’ll never see their father again, killed in the service of this city as a policeman trying to protect them from dangerous criminals like Rocco. He’ll take anything he can get his hands on. He’s greedy, and he doesn’t need anyone besides himself. It’s a game to him, and you’ll only ever be a pawn.”

“Shut up, Carbone. You’re full of fluff.”

“You forgot all about them, didn’t you?” He regarded Bianchi with a sweaty detached mask. “No, he didn’t forget them. He didn’t even think of them. He used and discarded them like everyone else he’s ever known, even his family. Each special girl in his life abandoned and added to the list. He’ll use you too if he has to.”

“You lie, Carbone.”

“I do?” He turned to the young woman, whose face was still obscured, but clearly focused on him. “He says he loves you. He’s said that to the other twelve or so women he’s ‘loved.’ If he really loves you, would he ask you to leave your family, your friends, for a life on the run?” She didn’t answer. “You know you can’t go with him,” Carbone continued, “with a murderer who will stab the back of anyone gullible enough to believe him as soon as they’ve proved use.” He looked at the girl with sympathy. “The law doesn’t want you. Go home.”

The girl rose, completed the sign of the cross, and booked it across the aisle, wiping her eyes with her veil. I never even caught her name. By now I was out and noticeable, but Carbone was too proud of the devastation writ on Rocco Bianchi’s mug. He took on a real confident undertone saying, “You’re going with me.”

Rocco merely gripped the pew with both hands and muttered, “You wanna die, Carbone? Here? Now?”

Carbone was smirking, ever so slightly, but not in the upper half of his face, which was all dull and glazed. “I warn you, Bianchi, I’ve got a gun too. I’ve been lucky. I’ve never had to kill a man in my life. I’ll get you, Bianchi. I’ll get you because I’ve got to.”

“You got no gun.”

“Go ahead, call my bluff.”

Bianchi reached into his coat. “You’d shoot me, here in church?”

“I think I’d be forgiven in this case.”

I took this as my cue to make noise. “Nobody’s shooting anybody.” I walked up and jerked my thumb at the front pews. “Think how that would scare the nice old ladies here.”

They both looked a little surprised. “You said yourself you’ve never killed anyone,” I told Carbone. I lowered my voice in lieu of the old ladies. “Why the heck would you start now?”

Carbone’s mild smirk disappeared. Rocco chuckled.

“So it’s your turn, huh?” said Bianchi. “Who’s your gun for?”

I reached into my own jacket, out of form. “I know there’s a low chance you’re both bluffing, but we’re all Catholic here, so let’s take this outside. Or I can call up the Pope and ask permission for a Mexican standoff–except under Pope Pius the twelfth, we shoot with our hands inside our suits and our hats off our heads, out of respect for the Holy Virgin.”

Carbone let out a short sigh of relief, which I knew he needed as bad as he needed a doctor, a blood transfusion, three months of sick leave, a closed case, a return to the daily grind, a slug of rum, and a donut. He afforded me a brief smile. “It’s good to know I’m not alone.” Carbone looked down his nose at Bianchi. “You lead the way.”

I gave Bianchi a warning glance. His mouth opened and nothing came out. It almost made me laugh, but then he clamped it shut and I really had to hold it in. He must have thought I had a plan. I would have liked to know what that was. At this late stage in the game, I owed him nothing–Vaness would be released and cleared from suspicion–yet I wished I could see Rocco Bianchi off into the sunset, instead of the electric chair. As we walked down the humid church aisle, he seemed to share my feeling we were heading for a cemented up back alley with no holes to squeeze through.

When we stepped outside, there were no police lights, and no squad car, only quiet night streets, which was eerie. Shok wasn’t showing his hand, so I would feel things out until I had a card to play.

Bianchi said, “To think of all the time I wasted. I coulda been out of here by now. I’ll know better next time.”

“There won’t be a next time,” said Carbone, stopping us on the top steps.

“I think he owes–knows that,” I said, trying not to slur words.

“Hand me the gun,” said Carbone, who I knew couldn’t possibly have one of his own.

Bianchi took it out by the barrel. At the same moment we both noticed blood trailing down Carbone’s extended hand. I felt a ripple of shivers.

“Carbone, you sprung a leak. You don’t look too healthy.” Bianchi clutched the gun and pounded him in the arm, right where he’d been shot. Carbone crumpled like a stone across the steps. Then Bianchi whirled and threw me against the stone church archway.

“I don’t get your game, popping out at this crucial moment, or what side you’re on, but I don’t need the confusion, and I don’t you around any more. I’m perfectly capable on my own.”

“I guess so.”

Carbone remained exactly as he’d fallen, a sad clump of his coat and stringy black hair. I felt a corporeal black malignancy spreading in my stomach beyond that overdose of rum I’d consumed. He was more than my boss, he was a friend. 

Bianchi reached for Carbone’s gun when he was blinded by another set of passing lights. He straightened like a frightened cat and loped away like some pedestrian veteran, leaving the gun and Carbone together.

Checking the car, I saw it was only a sedan. When I looked down, Carbone had propped himself on an architectural stone and was leveling his gun at Bianchi, still walking away. I grabbed his wrists.

“No, Carbone! You don’t want to cross that line.”

Carbone was incredibly strong despite in his condition as he struggled to aim between Bianchi’s shoulderblades. The gun went off. Bianchi looked back and pulled out a switchblade. Sirens blared from the alley across the street and a patrol car banked on the curb in front of me. There was no one on the sidewalk. Bianchi was gone.

The flashing lights of the squad car alternated and blinked across beads of sweat on Carbone’s forehead as he fixed his deep brown eyes up at me, finally easing his grip on the gun. He finally sounded as wounded as he looked. “I wanted to believe in you, Norman. Tell me it was for good reason.”

“Vaness. If Bianchi didn’t escape, Shok would have her behind bars instead of that big masseuse.”

Carbone made another attempt with the gun and I wrestled with him briefly before it tumbled to the sidewalk.

Shok stepped out of the car with his shiny .32 pointed at my head. “You’re under arrest, Gartner.” He’d been pining many hours for my downfall, he was grinning.

I was told never to surrender. It was better to be dead than a POW.

I wasn’t that stupid. I knew he could land me between the eyes and brag about it later, how I’d “reached into my suit with a cocky grin” or “with a vicious, hungry snarl.”

I straightened on the church steps with my hands up. Shok came up to me with the gun, threw me against the church door and cuffed me. I wondered if those church ladies inside were still completely invested in their prayers.

“Shok,” Carbone said, struggling to get up. “Bianchi…. He’s getting away.”

“Why didn’t you lead with that?” Shok roughly threw me in the backseat and pulled off the sidewalk with a thump after Carbone had crawled into the passenger side. The Lieutenant leaned back, panting like an old dog.

“Which way did he go?” Shok asked behind the wheel.

Carbone sat more upright, resuming his composed demeanor. “Most likely, he's skipped into an alley. I had him in my sights, but Gartner stopped me.”

“I’ll take that as a confession.”

The whir of the engine, the lights, me in cuffs… it was too horrible. I had to defend myself. “I couldn’t let you…” Carbone glanced at me, resting his head on the seat. I tried not to look at the cuffs, to pretend it wasn’t happening. “You can’t shoot him in the back. It’s not you. You can’t.”

“Why?” said Shok. “Cuz he’s valuable to the FBI?” Shok cursed me in a mumble.

Carbone’s eyes remained on me. Maybe he was getting the point. “Because he gives the department a bad name, humiliated your efforts–To shoot a lowlife thief and cheap killer in the back, unarmed and well on his way away from you, to shoot him in the back–I can’t let you become that.”

I could see that hurt on his face. The guilty or disapproving frown. “You may have good morals, Gartner, but you’re mixed up. We have to bring him in, and that doesn’t always involve a blank check of mercy.”

Why does he have to sound right?! I thought, Why must he sound reasonable?!

“Dammit! You know that’s not the way you would have done it a week ago! You’re not the kind of policeman to shoot an unarmed man in the back, no matter what he’s done. You knew he had no gun, and all you wanted was to stop your nemesis. He isn’t much of an Al Capone. He’s not much of an operator either. He’s lucky he got this far at all.”

Carbone looked away and held his bad shoulder. He did nothing to remove the stringy hair hanging over his forehead as he chewed on his lower lip. “I can’t say you’re right for what I know you’ve helped Bianchi do,” he looked right into my eyes. “But you may have prevented me from doing something I would have regretted for the rest of my life. Thank you for that, Norman.”

“Hey, Carbone, when you’re done talkin’ to the felon, I think this alley runs straight toward Viazzo’s.”

Shok threw the wheel and hurled us down an alley, and a running figure in a beige, flapping trench coat was caught in the lights.

“There he is!” Shock rolled the window, grabbing his gun and steering with his wrist. Bianchi loped faster.

“Stop you son of a bitch I’m not looking for an excuse!”

A figure in a black suit stepped out of the darkness of a side alley from the right. “Stop you–” Shok’s voice broke clean off, prescient of its intent. The figure drew a gun and fired several times through the windshield. I threw myself on the floor of the car. Shots fired closeby and slammed my head on the back of the seat when we crashed with a loud compaction like a big fat gunshot with overtones of breaking glass. When I opened my eyes, I saw flecks of blood across the rear bench seat, illuminated by the squad car headlights reflecting off some other surface. A little sound of fear came out of my mouth, and I heard nothing in return, except a steam, presumably from the busted engine. I slowly raised myself on my rear, when I was sure no more shots were going to fire–maybe the assailant had gotten crushed under the wheels. Slowly, I turned myself around, trying not to let the broken bits of glass cut into my pants, and flinched when I saw Shok’s ear hanging off a bloodied segment of skull where the bullets had ripped through. The front passenger side door opened. I boosted myself up on the rear seat, and saw Carbone crawl out onto the pavement, head first. When he had gotten pretty far he stopped altogether, ankles sitting on the running board. I tried to kick open the back door, but it was locked. Swearing, I threw myself over the seat into the front, shoes in the air. I managed to right myself up, kicking against Shok’s legs, and looked up to see Emerald Norval standing there over the sprawled Lieutenant, wearing my black suit with the pistol in her hand. Through the front windshield, I could still see Rocco Bianchi in his beige trenchcoat, running best he could, disappearing gradually into the darkness. Emerald’s lips were as red as the blood seeping from under Carbone’s coat into the cracks of the gravely alley street. She reached around me and unhooked the keys from Shok’s belt. I listened to the engine hiss as Emerald unlocked the cuffs in front of me. She offered her hand. I ignored it and stepped over Carbone into the alley. Emerald checked the pistol chamber.

Her voice was steady and uncharacteristically calm. “I managed to stall the detective on a fruitless chase while you were in there. Did the tart look anything like me?”

I watched the side of Carbone’s face for movement. His eyes were closed, and a trail of blood from the smashed glass dribbled down his forehead. “I never saw her face.”

“Good. There’s still one bullet left.” She slammed the cartridge home and took aim at his head.

“No!”

Carbone rolled over and fired up at her at the same time she aimed down at him.

I tumbled out of the car on my face. I got up with my shoulder on fire and saw Emerald stumble several steps back before crashing into a pair of garbage cans. She remained on the ground, groaning softly. I dragged myself aside and patted the side of my friend’s face. Carbone’s eyelids worked up and down, eyes swimming. He didn’t seem to have too long.

“I’ll phone for help.”

I tried to reach into the car backward for the radio when I saw the shoulder of my suit was torn. I touched it with my right hand and found I was bleeding through my shirt. I reached in with my other arm and brought the radio to my mouth.

“Two officers down. Past the church, in the alley behind Viazzo’s.” I sat beside Carbone.

“It’s okay,” he said, barely keeping his eyes anywhere. “We got him. It’s okay.” He reached up for my arm like he needed to covey a dire message and it dropped beside him.

Across the alley, one of Emerald’s black heels stood upright, the other was outstretched on her right foot. There was no more sound from her.

I looked into the darkness of the alley, but the killer was gone.

And I was alone.

I seem to remember walking over to Emerald Norval, lying between trash cans. She drew the gun at me, but I said, “What’s the point, you used the last bullet.”

Her voice was shaky now, and I distinctly remember seeing the whites of her teeth. “I was joking!” From my position I could see her right leg was shot up below the knee and the blood was coming from there. “Do you think I’d shoot him point blank you–” She broke off into a few vulgar insults and pressed the gun under her own chin. “They’ll get me now anyway.”

I bent down and grabbed her wrist. “Nobody’s getting anybody.” I threw the pistol behind me and took off my black tie.

“Ha! And you didn’t even get shot.”

Tying the tourniquet on her was difficult, given my bruised left shoulder, but apparently it was only a bad bruise. I found myself staring at the striped brown orange and grey tie around her collar, my birthday gift from Vaness, and I asked if I could take it off. She didn’t protest until I walked with it to the squad car.

“You son of a bitch! Where the hell are you going?”

I took the keys from the ignition of the squad car and used it to unlock the rear doors. Then I used them to remove that suitcase of evidence from the trunk. When I walked it on down to another side alley to a trash can, dumped everything in it, and set it on fire, she seemed to get the idea.

I tied the ugly striped tie around my neck and returned to Emerald, to tell her what happened. “Carbone told me you were working as an informant for him.”

“Me? A damn stool pidgeon?” Every word was screamed with pain and retribution.

“Listen to me. He mentioned you were an informant, and planned to meet Bianchi in this alley behind Viazzo’s to give him some magical ticket out of the country, so that Carbone and Shok could intercept him.”

“Viazzo’s…”

I gave her an even smile. “See? I know that because Carbone told me so. However, the meet went wrong. Bianchi stole your gun, and fired several times into the police car. In the crossfire, you were shot, too. In the aftermath, he escaped. I did my best to stop him by taking Shok’s gun…” From there I lost my train of action, in wonderment of my own imagination.

Something fast zipped by my cheek, and the garbage can jumped. It had a hole in it. I turned around, and saw Shok bleeding from the mouth with one ear hanging in a pad of flesh off the side of his head, lazily training the .32 on and off my chest. His lips moved but nothing tangible came out between them. His head was cocked to one side, as if that could help his lost hearing. He batted the hanging ear with one hand in annoyance before retraining his aim. I walked to the discarded pistol, raised it, and slowly walked around him, until I was level with the hood, one corner crushed against the side of a building. Shok followed me, loping unevenly on a broken leg, shakily holding up his own gun, until he was standing over Carbone behind the open passenger side door. He fired again, past my shoulder. I fired reflexively and the last round plugged right into his face. There was a small splatter before he hit the ground. And that was it.

I walked up to the other side of the door and looked down at him. He had been lucky to fall backward, his shoes inches from the side of Carbone’s arm. Shok looked completely grey, including the whites of his eyes. There was a small dark hole below his left one. I opened the rear seat of the squad car until it hit his head. I then crouched behind it and made a quick run around to pick up his .32, then used it to fire as many times as it took at an incredibly high angle down that alley until it was empty. Once.

Too bad, I thought, I missed.

I walked back to Emerald, and crouched near her. “And after Carbone and Shok are killed, I take Shok’s gun and fire at the fleeing killer, but there was only one bullet left and I missed. I ran to you, knowing you were an informant working for Carbone, and proceeded to use my tie as a tourniquet.”

I heard sirens. Emerald’s head lolled to one side and her eyelids fluttered closed. I shook her by the arms, I needed her to listen.

“After I tied the tourniquet, I found Bianchi had dropped his gun, and in my rush I brought it close by so not to lose the evidence while I made sure I kept you talking so you wouldn’t die on me. That’s right? If it wasn’t right you would tell me. Is that what happened?”

“Yes, that’s what happened.” She reached up for my arms. “God, I’ve been a lonely fool. I save that jerk from the electric chair and he leaves a girl to die.” She pulled me closer, employing her best starlet voice. “I’m a fool. Look what I’ve had in front of me and I waste it on that selfish bastard.” She thrust her head as high as she was able toward me. “Give me a kiss before I die.”

She might, I thought. I wanted to say this was all for somebody else that she looked a little bit like, that but Vaness was very far away in a cold cell and this woman was very close to a cold grave. I touched my lips to her cheek. Emerald Norval collapsed and started crying ugly tears.

The alleyway filled with noise. I found myself at the center of the noise for several hours.

I met Vaness outside the police station that same night. Her ex, Johnny Schmerkowitz was sentenced to a one hundred dollar fine and ten collective months in jail for breaking the restraining order, trespassing, and damaging owned property, and in the same span Vaness and I were engaged and began to look for a new apartment together. Now and then, we got dinner and a show at Viazzo’s with Antoinetta Spadaro as headliner.

O’Grady wondered at the narrow scope and suspicious lack of evidence explaining Emerald’s history as informant for that final scene, and my account that Shok had brought me along for Bianchi’s apprehension to encourage my recruitment into the police force, but never dug so deep. He had other cases to handle, and a new partner to train.

Eileen Hennessey was sentenced along with her partner Brock Lumsden in the robbery and murder of a Mrs. Bembo and her dog. To death. The NYPD searched for Rocco Bianchi for several months, until they left it in the hands of the FBI. Rumors circulated that he’d died unrecognized as a homeless bum in some gutter, others that he made it to Colombia or Cuba or wherever successful criminal runaways find their home. 

Carbone’s funeral was as big as Hauser’s, and I stayed far away from his mother, his siblings, and his nieces and nephews. I stayed miles away from Shok’s and sent no flowers. 

Burdened by the death of my boss and his partner, I quit my detective assistant position, set my alarm to four am and took up a full-time job as a municipal garbage collector.

Just a goddamn job.