Queens Noir (24 page)

As for me, I want back on the SWAT team and the Fugitive Apprehension Squad. I want both of those things and I
want them bad enough to play along.

"Anything I can do for you, I'm ready," I finally say. "You know
that."

"It's about your cousin, Joanna."

"The Slinky?"

"Pardon?"

"That's what I call her, Uncle Mike. The Slinky."

He bursts out laughing. "Yes, I can understand why you'd
say that."

Joanna Kelly embodies the concept of slender. Her fingernails are slender, her elbows, her teeth. On those rare occasions when I'm with her, I feel like the Incredible Hulk.

"It wouldn't be so bad, Uncle Mike, if she didn't wear
those dresses."

He nods agreement, his narrow smile widening slightly to
indicate genuine amusement. "Ah, the dresses."

Joanna likes plunging, short-skirted designer frocks. When
she attends family gatherings, male attention drifts her way
like dust to a vacuum cleaner.

"So what about Joanna?"

"Paulie assaulted her last night."

"I thought Paulie was in prison?"

"He was paroled a week ago."

"So pick him up and violate him. What's the big deal?"

Paulie Malone is Joanna's ex-husband. He's an all-around
knucklehead and he pretty much beat Joanna from the earliest days of their marriage until she finally called down the
wrath of Uncle Mike and the rest of the Kelly clan. Then,
within hours, Paulie was off the street, his bail denied, his
lawyer made to understand that no plea bargain would be
forthcoming. A short trial was followed by a conviction and a
three-year sentence, the max for second-degree assault.

"I could have him picked up eventually," Uncle Mike concedes, "but I'll tell ya, Jill, if he hasn't gotten the message by
now, he'll never get it. He's incorrigible."

"So what exactly do you want from me?" The words have
an air of defiance, but my tone is resigned. Do it, or else: That's
how I understand the offer.

"Your cousin needs protection."

"Only if you let Paulie stay on the street."

"Okay, I won't argue. Joanna needs protection until Paulie
is taken into custody."

"You're telling me Paulie's not to be found?"

"He never reported to his halfway house or his parole officer. His whereabouts, as we in the policing business like to
say, are unknown."

I look out the window at a nondescript street in a nondescript neighborhood. The stores on the other side of Pitkin Avenue survive from month to month. A barber who makes
book, a candy store that hawks cigarettes smuggled in from
Virginia, a cop bar named Melvin's Hideaway.

"Jill?"

"I'm still listening, Uncle Mike."

"Then I'm still insisting. Joanna needs twenty-four-hour
protection."

"And you want me to do the protecting."

"I think Joanna would be more comfortable with a woman,
and you're the only woman I trust to do the job."

The rumor in the Kelly family is that Uncle Mike continued to offer Joanna his support long after Paulie went to prison,
that Joanna found a suitable way to express her gratitude. I'd
never cared enough to check it out, but now it begins to make
sense. Under no circumstances would Uncle Mike allow his
main squeeze to be locked in, 24/7, with a male cop.

"Am I gonna do this in uniform?"

"Sad to say, the job doesn't provide bodyguard protection
to battered women." He shakes his head. "I've arranged for
you to take your vacation. Later, I'll make it up to you."

I've got a big mouth and I say the first thing to enter my
mind. "Ya know, I really wanna tell you to go fuck yourself."

Uncle Mike leans forward, his blue eyes twinkling, "Well,
darlin'," he croaks, "don't waste your breath. If I could, I'd
already have done so." He gets up, comes around the desk,
and offers me his hand. "Let's take a walk, Jill. I feel the need
of some fresh air."

He's right about the fresh air. Spring has penetrated the steeland-concrete heart of the city. Tight buds crown every twig,
and weeds push up through cracks in the sidewalk. For a few
minutes, I keep pace with Uncle Mike, who walks with his hands behind his back as if pondering some weighty matter.
Then, mostly because I'm getting bored, I decide to give him
a break.

"You want me to kill him, Uncle Mike? That what you
want?"

"That's harsh, Jill."

"If you were gonna bust him, send him back to the joint,
you could just make Joanna disappear until Paulie surfaces."

He bares his teeth and grips my shoulder, stopping me in
my tracks. "The Kellys don't run," he announces. "Never."

The effort to raise his voice makes him sound like a
spooked chicken, but the point is clear enough. Paulie Malone
has defied the Kelly family for the second time and he's not
gonna get another warning. The other part, about taking him
into custody, was pure bullshit.

"That makes Joanna the bait." When he doesn't respond,
I add, "And me the executioner."

"Well, it won't be the first time, will it?" That said, Uncle
Mike shifts gears. "Sooner or later, Paulie's going to kill her.
We both know that, Jill. You may not like Joanna, but you
can't deny that she has a right to her life." He takes a deliberate step, then another. "The sad truth is that I wouldn't trust
anyone else in the family to handle this."

I ignore the flattery. "What if he shows up without
a weapon, Uncle Mike? You want me to shoot him down,
maybe go to prison for the next fifteen years?"

"Last thing on my mind." He reaches into his pocket,
comes out with a battered .38, holds it up for my inspection.
The grip, hammer, and trigger guard are wrapped with cloth
tape. "I'll be able to control the post-shooting investigation.
You just make sure this is laying on the ground next to Paulie
and that you call me first." Suddenly, he takes my hand and grips it hard. His fingers are bony and cold. "Do this for the
Kellys, Jill. Do it for us."

Repulsed, I pull my hand away. "So where's Joanna living
these days?"

"She has a little house in College Point."

Again, it makes sense. I got to know the small neighborhood of College Point well in the two years I worked at the
109th Precinct in Queens, my first assignment out of the
Academy. The Point's white working-class population is protected on one side by the East River, on the others by a solid
wall of industry. The Asian explosion in Flushing, only a few
miles away, has barely made a dent in the community's ethnic
makeup. To Joanna, who was raised in Howard Beach, the mix
of Irish, Germans, Italians, and Jews must seem like home.

But I know that Joanna's comfort is a secondary concern
to Uncle Mike. Far more important is getting to and from her
bed without being spotted by anybody who knows them.

Uncle Mike fancies himself the Kelly patriarch, and his
authority goes unchallenged for the most part. Even as a Deputy Chief, he still has the ability to grant favors and deliver
punishments. So the clan doesn't object to his relationship
with Joanna, as long as he doesn't throw it in his wife's face.

"Yes or no," Uncle Mike finally declares. "I need an answer."

I take the .38 and shove it into my pocket. Though I
haven't decided what, if anything, I plan to do, I don't have
the cojones to refuse outright. I don't have the balls to seal my
fate.

"Yes," I tell him.

Joanna has a right to her life, small and miserable though it
may be. It's the only part of Uncle Mike's argument that holds
up. It doesn't matter that a minute after I walk through the door, Joanna tells me I should let my hair grow out and change
the color. Or that she wears a slinky jogging suit that cups her
breasts and butt as though paying homage. Or that her arms
and legs are firm without being muscular and she's so perfectly
made up, the black-purple bruises on her face look as if they're
part of the overall design. Joanna has a right to her life.

After a perfunctory air-kiss, Joanna leads me into the
kitchen, where she evaluates my potential as if I was a coat
on a rack. "So, you seein' anybody?" she finally asks. When I
don't respond, she says, "I could fix you up, but you scare the
kind of guys I know."

"Actually, I've got a boyfriend, Joanna. Joey Kruger. He's
hung like a horse and he can hump all night. What more could
I possibly ask from life?"

As usual, my words, no matter how crude, have no appreciable effect on Joanna. Instead, she opens a cabinet next
to the refrigerator, withdraws a can of Colombian coffee (the
one with the likeness of the grateful peasant), and fits it into
an electric can opener. I note that her arms appear boneless,
then turn away.

"I'm gonna go outside, take a look around."

Ten minutes later, I'm back in the kitchen, hoisting a cup
of coffee. "When did the fence go up?" I ask Joanna.

"Three months ago."

"What about the outdoor lights? When were they installed?"

"The same time."

"And the window bars on the first floor?"

Joanna glances into my eyes, the gesture sly, then looks
down at her coffee. "Me living here by myself, Uncle Mike
thought it would be a good idea. For my security." She rubs
the back of her hand across her brow, as if to erase the lie. "It's getting warm in here. Do you think I should turn on the
air-conditioning?"

Instead of answering, I lower the metal blinds, then set tables and lamps in front of as many windows as possible. When
I finish, I'm nearly certain that Paulie won't be able to see into
any room. Then I go back through the entire house, including
the basement, checking every lock on every window and door.
As I work, I become more and more pissed off by the obvious
fact that Uncle Mike set this up months ago, that he knew
Paulie was coming out, that he made his preparations well in
advance.

When I reenter the kitchen, I find Joanna touching up
her nail polish. I lay Uncle Mike's taped .38 on the table, say,
"If Paulie gets past me, you're gonna have to use this."

Without looking up, Joanna asks, "How's he gonna get
past you, Jill? I mean. . ."

What she means is that I'm a trained sniper, that there's
not a cop in the city who can shoot with me. What she means
is that the way Uncle Mike arranged things, Paulie's gonna
have to come through the front door and he's gonna make a
lot of noise in the process. What she means is that if I do my
job, if I decide, mercilessly and without warning, to execute
Paulie Malone, she won't need the .38.

Joanna inspects the nails on her right hand, then blows
softly across the drying polish. Her fingers are as supple as her
arms and shoulders. If she has knuckles, I can't see them.

"From here on out," I tell her, "I want you to stay upstairs
as much as possible."

"Fine by me. I was gonna go up and change for dinner
anyway.

"Joanna, it's 3 o'clock in the afternoon." I glance at the
stove. "And you haven't started cooking yet."

The corners of her mouth pull down and she rolls her
eyes. "I'm gonna take a bath," she announces. "I need to calm
my nerves.

I wait until Joanna's in the tub, then toss her room. Beneath a pair of lime -green panties in her second lingerie drawer,
next to a .32 caliber automatic and a box of ammo, I find a
small bundle of letters written on prison stationery.

It only takes me a few minutes to read through them. Like
every wife beater, Paulie is both contrite and optimistic. He
knows he's done the wrong thing, but now he's straightening
himself out. He's in therapy. He goes to Mass every Sunday.
His shrink loves him. Father O'Neill loves him. Even the warden loves him.

None of this interests me very much because I saw a lot
of domestic violence when I worked patrol. Once you put
them in cuffs, wife beaters are always remorseful. But what
does capture my attention is Paulie's reference to a note sent
by Joanna: Your letter gave me hope for the first time. I know I
don't deserve another chance, but when you wrote that you never
stopped loving me ...

I slip the .32 and the ammo into the pocket of my blazer,
scatter the letters on Joanna's bed where she's sure to notice
them, and finally go downstairs to open the blinds on a window in the living room. From a chair set back in the shadows, I can see most of the front yard. I note that there are no
trees and no tall shrubs between the house and the seven-foot
fence. The newly mown lawn is a killing zone.

By the time Paulie Malone opens the gate, steps inside, closes
it behind him, I'm sure of only one thing: I'm not gonna whack
him before I give him a chance to mend his ways.

I understand the implications. This means that I have to speak to Paulie close up. It means a dedicated knucklehead
with two years in prison behind him might decide that I'm the
enemy and beat me to a pulp. But as I rise from the chair and
head for the front door, I know I'm just gonna have to take the
chance. My one consolation is that if Paulie gets past me, he'll
probably murder Joanna, who's still in the bathtub.

I meet Paulie just as he reaches the top step of the little
porch. He jerks himself to a halt, but neither of its is willing to
be the first to speak. I drop my gaze to the middle of his chest
and wait. Two seconds, then three, then four, then ten, until
there's nothing left to its but violence. I watch his torso rotate
slightly, then I grab his balls, drop to one knee, and yank down
as hard as I can. When his body naturally follows his jewels, I
snap my head up and catch him flush on the mouth.

He goes over backwards, slams his head into the porch
railing, and drops, facedown, on the floorboards. I pull my
Colt and jerk the slide back to draw his attention to the bottom line, his miserable life. He pulls himself to a sitting position, then leans against the railing and brings his hand up to
his bloody mouth. Finally, he raises his eyes to look at me.

I have to blink twice before I can meet his gaze. Paulie
Malone has the saddest eyes I've ever seen, a fact that a moment before completely escaped me. Now I remember him when
times were better, at Christmas and Thanksgiving. Even in the
best of moods, even laughing, the pain never left his eyes.