Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [20]
The only thing Mary Silvestri wasn’t good at was marriage.
She hated housework and cooking and had little patience for family gatherings. She had no siblings and both her parents were dead. Her husband was a mechanic who owned two Bronx Mobil gas stations and from day one groused about not having a stay-at-home wife. It was a lament encouraged by her in-laws, none of whom ever resigned themselves to having a cop in the family—let alone a female cop.
Mary loved her son and would sometimes take him out of school and bring him on the job with her, sitting surveillance in unmarked sedans. It was her version of bonding, and Frank ate up every minute.
“You want me to be a cop?” Frank asked one day as her police car sat in a Taco Bell lot.
“Not unless you want to be,” Mary said between bites.
“Then why bring me along?” Frank asked.
Mary looked out the window, took a sip of coffee, then turned to her son. “So you understand what I do,” she said. “And maybe why I am the way I am.”
“When are you and Dad gonna get a divorce?”
Mary was surprised at the question. “Who says we are?”
“Somehow I don’t think I have to worry about throwin’ a surprise fiftieth anniversary party,” Frank said, finishing off a chicken burrito.
“We were kids when we married,” Mary said. “Too stupid to know better. I finished high school and he pumped gas. I went to the Academy and he pumped gas. I was pregnant with you and there he was, still pumping gas.
“And this is better?” Frank asked. “Sitting in cold cars, waiting for some guy to make a mistake?”
“For me it is,” Mary said. “Putting cuffs on a guy that iced somebody who should still be alive beats a ten-dollar fill-up in my book.”
“Dad likes what he does,” Frank said. “He’s good at it.”
“I like what I do,” Mary said. “And I’m good at it.”
“You still love him?”
“In my own way,” Mary said. “I do. It’s just that my own way may not be good enough for him anymore. If it ever was.”
“Would you be happier married to a cop?” Frank asked.
“I don’t think so.” Mary smiled at her son. “They’re good to have around at work, but a waste of time otherwise. Just like me. Given a choice, I’d stick with the guy pumping gas.”
“That’s good, Mom,” Frank said, smiling back.
“And speaking of gas,” Mary said, holding her stomach, “why the hell do you always make me eat these damn tacos?”
“Don’t forget,” Frank said. “You’re the one went in there once and asked for their recipe.”
“Had to flash my badge to get it too,” Mary said with a full laugh.
• • •
THE BODY OF the thirty-two-year-old bookkeeper had been hanging from a closet door for three days. The skin on his face was ash white, his limbs were stiff, eyes open and bulging. His feet had been cut off at the ankles and tossed on top of a nearby bed. There were puncture wounds, large and small, up and down the front and back of the seminude corpse. His hands were tied behind his back, held together by black leather straps, and his throat was slashed. Rats had feasted on the remains and maggots were starting to fester.
“Did a knife do that to the throat, Doc?” Silvestri asked the M.E. on the scene.
“Worse,” the medical examiner said in a weary voice. He was short, bald, and looked older than his forty-eight years. Three years on a job that averaged close to two thousand homicides a year, and he was already looking for the fastest way out.
“What’s worse, Jerry?” Mary asked.
“Corkscrew,” the doctor said. “Same one that was used to open the bottle of wine over on the bureau.”
“How long’s something like that take?” Tony Russo, Mary’s partner on the case, asked.
“As long as the killer wants it to,” the doctor said with a shrug, walking with head bowed away from the crime scene.
“You wanna get some coffee?” Russo asked Mary. He watched as the forensic team went about their business of taking photos, dusting for prints, bagging evidence, sealing up the cramped one-bedroom second-floor apartment that overlooked the Bronx River Parkway.
“You have to really enjoy killing to end a life like