Love or Honor (30 page)

When he worked at the 4-oh, he couldn't get to church regularly because of the hours, but he stopped by when he could. Sometimes, after they made an arrest, Phil would say, “Butch, let's stop by church and say thanks that we didn't hurt anybody, and they didn't hurt us, and we made a good arrest.” When they couldn't find a Greek church in the South Bronx, they would hit a Catholic church; St. Rita of Cascia, or St. Jerome's, right across the street from the station. Chris especially liked St. Ann's on 140th Street, a lovely little stone church with windows and doors trimmed in red brick, and a tiny cemetery with graves going back to the early 1800s. Even when he found out that St. Ann's was Episcopal, not Roman Catholic, Chris didn't mind, and he was pretty sure God didn't, either. The only thing that bothered Chris about churches was when they started locking their doors, except when it was time for services, because the neighborhood had gotten so bad. After that, he rarely got to church. He met a priest on the street one day and complained about it; the priest invited him to the rectory for lunch. Chris was impressed by the big, dim, baronial dining room, where his voice echoed as he talked from his end of the long table to the priest at the other end. He felt like Henry VIII, and he drank like Henry, as the housekeeper shuffled from one end of the table to the other, back and forth, pouring more wine. Chris always thought priests and cops had a lot in common: They started out thinking they were going to save the world, they saw people at their worst, and when they realized they weren't going to save the world, and turned to the bottle, they were sent to drying-out farms in Jersey.

Even after he was working more regular hours at the 4-oh, Chris didn't go to church. Liz didn't go to any church, and sleeping late on Sunday was very nice. When he went under, he didn't think about it. He and Marty went to St. Patrick's once, but as visitors, just wandering around, part of a day in Manhattan, with brunch afterward. They'd gone uptown to St. John the Divine because it was such a historic landmark. When Chris had had his appendix out, when he was a kid, he'd been at St. Luke's Hospital, and he told Marty he'd been able to see the steeple and part of St. John's from his hospital room.

Marty's father didn't go to church on Sunday. Anna went to Mass on Saturday evening, which took care of the Sunday rule, as far as the church was concerned. He was pretty sure Marty had been in the habit of going with her mother on Saturday, until he and Marty began going out on Saturdays most of the time. He hadn't thought about any of this for a long time, but now he admitted he felt uncomfortable going to church. How could he go to church with somebody he was deceiving so? Even on the visit to St. Patrick's, when he was just there as a tourist, he'd felt uncomfortable when he looked at the crucifix.

He'd stopped going to church, and he'd stopped praying because he felt uneasy about trying to talk to God. It seemed unlikely that God would care to listen. Now he felt he had to go to church. He felt he had, literally, no place else to go.

He found a church at the edge of Little Italy, Our Lady of Pompeii. It became a sanctuary. The church was locked during the day, but it was open very early in the morning, for Mass. When he was out all night, he would head over to the church and wait on the opposite corner until he saw lights go on. Then the church would be unlocked in a few minutes.

When he went in, he was too sick at heart to kneel and look at the altar. He lay flat on his back in a side pew and stared at the ceiling.

Thou shalt not lie.

Thou shalt not steal.

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

It wasn't that simple, though. It wasn't just guilt, though God knows he felt guilty. But guilt was relatively simple. Ordinary adultery would not be so difficult, in itself, to handle, to explain and possibly atone for. He thought that if Liz had been unfaithful, had an affair, he'd have tried to understand. He wouldn't have jumped up and yelled, “I'm leaving you, you tramp!” He could have found a million excuses for her.

But he could find no excuse for himself. This was much more complicated. His entire identity was in question here: his heart and mind and soul. This went to the basic question of who he was and who he had been and who he was going to be. “Remember who you are,” Harry had warned. Whoever that was.

“I'm not feeling so hot,” he told Frankie. “Do you know a doctor I could go to?” Besides the emotional distress, he was in physical pain; he could feel a lump in his groin. Frankie sent him to a doctor who wrote a prescription for Valium, no questions asked.

Between the Valium and the Jack Daniel's, Chris was able to get along reasonably well. He was glad he wasn't as busy as he had been, now that The Daily Planet was closed, Zero's was about to close, and the C&G Club was winding down. He was able to visit his mother about once a month, usually in midevening, around eight o'clock. He didn't call first, because Katrina was always home in the evening. She was always happy to see him, never questioning his silences or his absence. “I'm working,” Chris told her briefly, and that was the end of it. He sat at the kitchen table and drank coffee as she told him what was going on in the family. Katrina always tried to give him supper, but he wouldn't eat, because he was squeezing in these visits before beginning his nighttime rounds, when there would be more than enough to eat and drink. He stayed about an hour, and when he left, he circled the block to make sure he wasn't being tailed. Even a visit to his mother wasn't entirely safe. Nothing was entirely safe, of course, but some things were more unthinkable than others, such as the thought of Katrina having an unexpected visitor, after Chris was gone.

He went with Frankie one night to a restaurant on the Grand Central Parkway, a big place, a supper club with a good vocalist. They were eating when a guy came in, followed by two guys, all making a kind of grand entrance. The guy in the lead was smoking a fat cigar. The three men were at a table when a couple of other men surrounded them; there was loud cursing, arguing. Two of the men at the table stood up; then there was pushing and shoving. Then all three men were escorted, emphatically, out the door. The guy with the cigar was very mad, waving his cigar and yelling as he was being thrown out.

“Who's that?” Chris asked Frankie.

“Oh, that's Carmine G,” Frankie said casually.

Chris was surprised. The newspapers made Carmine Galante, the Bonnanno chief, sound like a godfather, but Chris thought he seemed like a fat slob, if not a deadbeat: He heard that the commotion involved a large unpaid tab.

When he wasn't immersed in thinking about his own situation, Chris felt steady as a rock. He was able to pay attention, when it was a clear-cut job, just a matter of intelligence. He was at the bar at the Plaza with a couple of bad guys, one weekday evening. He didn't like going to the Plaza on business, anymore, because Marty liked the place and he liked going there with her. But Chris had run across a guy—a big fellow, German, something of a wacko—who was scoping the place for burglaries. When Chris heard about it, he arranged to meet the guy there. The German was tall and weird; he had a car with a sunroof, and he would stick his head up out of the sunroof when he was driving.

They were drinking at the bar when two girls approached. The German started talking to one girl, and the other girl started talking to Chris. She wouldn't tell him her name. “You can call me Sugar,” she said. “Are you in New York on business?”

“I'm from New York,” Chris said. “Astoria.”

“Oh, Astoria, then you must know my boyfriend,” Sugar said.

“Well, who's your boyfriend?” Chris asked.

“He's Pete,” she said. “Pete the Greek.”

Bingo! “Yeah, I know Pete,” Chris said. “I always liked Pete, but you know what he did? He whacked out a good friend of mine.” He spoke slowly, picking his words carefully. “I could never figure out why Pete did that, because I always liked Pete.”

“Who told you about that?” Sugar asked.

“I don't remember,” Chris said. “What difference does it make? I'm just sorry he killed my friend, that's all.”

Sugar lifted her glass shakily.

“Yeah, and they killed him in my house, too,” she moaned. “Oh my God, do you know what they did? Do you know what Pete did? Pete cut him up in the bathtub in my house. There was hair and pieces of scalp stuck in my bathtub drain.”

Her hands shook, and some of her drink spilled.

“I can't believe Pete did that,” Chris said. “What did he do that for?”

“I don't know,” Sugar said, “but he did. And Pete's crazy. I found a finger under my radiator, oh God.” She began to cry.

Chris took her outside.

“Oh, I shouldn't have told you,” Sugar moaned. “I don't know who you are. Pete's going to be mad at me. You're not going to tell Pete I was here hooking, are you?”

“No, no, I'm not going to tell Pete,” Chris told her.

“Promise! Promise me you won't tell Pete! Pete's crazy. Pete would kill me.”

“I won't tell Pete, I promise,” Chris said. “You give me your phone number so I can call you and make sure you're okay. Here, take this.” He fished in his pocket for a twenty. “Take a cab, go home and get some sleep.”

He called Harry. “You're always waking me up,” Harry complained. “Can't it wait?”

“Listen, Harry,” Chris said. “Remember that guy they found in the river, that torso?…” Harry remembered, and he agreed it couldn't wait.

Harry got in touch with Homicide. Chris got in touch with Sugar and asked her to meet him at Mumbles, on Second Avenue. Chris was wired with two recorders—one personal, one that Harry could pick up in his car, where he was parked around the corner on 33rd Street. It felt odd to be wired again. He'd stopped wearing the wire except for selected situations, such as this meeting with Sugar. Otherwise, he left it at home or in the trunk of the car. Once he'd become intimate with Marty, the wire had become an impossibility. What was he going to say to her, “Don't come any closer—don't touch me!”

Sugar came in swaying and smiling. She was stoned, bombed out of her mind. When Chris brought up the subject, she looked at him as though she were trying to bring him into focus.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she said.

“About Pete killing the guy in your bathroom,” Chris said. “I just can't believe Pete would do a thing like that.”

“Hey, I thought you were going to forget about that,” Sugar said. “Hey, you promised.”

“You told me …” Chris began, when Sugar spotted someone down along the bar.

“Doctor Maxwell, Doctor Maxwell, hi! It's me! Remember me, you did my abortion for me, remember?” She was leaning across Chris, trying to talk to the doctor on the other side.

Chris gave up. “Listen, I gotta run,” he told her. He fished a twenty from his pocket. “Here, take a cab, go home and get some sleep.”

Through the conversation they picked up on the tape, they traced the doctor, who came up with Sugar's name and address. Then she couldn't be found. When Pete the Greek couldn't be located, either, Chris worried about her. Eventually, Homicide tracked them down at a motel near the airport. When that unit took over the investigation, Chris was no longer involved. Still, he felt good about it. He hadn't been wearing a trenchcoat, not waving a cigar, but he'd come close to fulfilling his old dream: “I'm Detective Anastos. I'm here to solve the homicide for you.”

As often as he could, Chris just slipped away and went down to Waterside. He listened to his radio a lot. He'd grown up with radio. George had bought a big Philco, with all kinds of dials; you could even pick up foreign stations on shortwave, though there was a lot of static. The Philco had doors in front, opening to a record player. You stacked records on the metal pole, and the records fell, one at a time, with a thump. On Saturdays, Chris had listened faithfully to a children's program, with Little Sparky and Big John. Big John had a deep, strong voice. “Hello, little guys, I can see you out there. I can see you brushing your teeth. Have you brushed your teeth today, Billy? How about you, Mary? Have you brushed your teeth today?” Big John called out just about every name you could think of, but he never called out, “Chris.”

Waterside was just a handful of blocks from the Police Academy. Chris began walking around the neighborhood nearly every day, going past the Academy, up and down that block. He was standing at the corner of Second Avenue and 22nd Street one day, waiting for the light to change, when a radio car pulled over to the curb. A cop got out and looked at the front tire, bending over to peer at it closely.

The light changed, but Chris didn't cross the street. He just stood there staring at the car. A wave of remorse and nostalgia and sorrow swept over him so strongly he felt shaken. He looked at the two uniformed cops and was suddenly, irrationally, furious. You guys have got the greatest job in the world and you don't appreciate it! You don't care! All you want to do is to get out of that car and into plainclothes—well, you are stupid! You are fucking crazy!

The light had been changing, as Chris just stood there. He was staring so fixedly that the cop who was inspecting the tire was now staring at him. Chris recovered, and walked over to the car.

“Hi, where's the subway, Officer?” he asked.

The cop looked blank.

Chris leaned down and spoke to the cop in the driver's seat.

“Where's the subway, Officer?” he repeated. He didn't look at the cop; he just looked at the inside of the car, smelling it, remembering it. He just wanted to fling open the door, get in, lean back and just sit in that car, safely, forever.

“Three blocks over,” the cop said, pointing. “Twenty-third and Park.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot,” Chris said. He looked at the cop then. “God bless you,” he said. The cop blinked. Chris crossed the street, but he stood on the opposite corner and watched the radio car until it pulled away and was out of sight.