Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [44]
“Why you telling me all this now?” the detective, Sal Albano, asked. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”
“I wanted to see if I could make it through the Academy,” Bobby said. “If I didn’t, nobody needed to know.”
“How long’ve you been off the shit?”
“Eight years this March,” Bobby said. “Shot three speedballs on my sixteenth birthday. Two nights later, my mom got killed.”
“You ain’t the first cop that ever took a hit on the hard stuff,” Albano said. “Shit, these days, I think half the fuckin’ guys in uniform are buzzed out of their skulls.”
“So I don’t get booted?” Bobby asked.
“You’re the best pure cop I ever trained,” Albano said, “and I’ve been doing this long enough to know good when I see it. You stay clean, you’ve got no beef with me.”
“I asked to be put in a precinct in my old neighborhood,” Bobby said, sitting back in his chair, muscular frame relaxed, the once-dead eyes now clear and lucid. “Any chance of that?”
“I’ll make some calls,” Albano said. “Shouldn’t be a problem. But don’t get used to it. Guy like you ain’t gonna be in uniform long. An old friend of mine in Brooklyn needs a good young cop to work decoy. Told him about you. Expect a call in about six months.”
“I won’t need that long to do what I have to do,” Bobby said, standing and reaching over to shake Albano’s hand.
“Which is what?” Albano asked.
“Look up an old friend,” Bobby Scarponi of the New York City Police Department said.
• • •
THE HEAVY APRIL rain pounded the squad car as it circled the empty South Jamaica streets, fog lights on, wipers slapping aside thick streams of water. Bobby Scarponi kicked up the sound on the police radio and turned the window defogger knob down. He was starting his fourth month as a street cop and had already made a dent in cleaning up his old neighborhood. He had nailed four mid-level drug dealers and had taken down an armed felon hiding in a public school science lab. He reintroduced himself to the local merchants, many of whom remembered him as the drug-crazed teen who shoplifted from their stores. Now he was there to protect them.
The street kids, aware of Scarponi’s past, called him Rev. Jim, after the brain-frazzled character portrayed on the hit television series Taxi. The name made its way into the halls of Bobby’s precinct and stuck. Scarponi didn’t mind. It helped give him a street ID, a name they would remember, a key first step toward being a cop they would turn to for help.
The passing years had failed to soften the frost between Bobby and his father. They still shared a roof, but nothing more. Not even the first sight of Bobby in a policeman’s uniform could shake loose his father’s hate.
Bobby Scarponi understood.
He had resigned himself to his culpability in his mother’s death, fighting daily to control the emotions boiling beneath his calm exterior. He knew those emotions would eventually need to be set free to exact their toll. Only then, perhaps, could he work toward building a peace with the man whose house he occupied but whose love he long ago lost.
Bobby Scarponi also knew that when the day came for him to open that emotional cage, the beast it unleashed would be aimed at Ray Monte.
• • •
BOBBY PULLED THE squad car directly behind the parked Mercedes and shoved the gear stick into park, letting the motor idle. He put on a pair of thin black gloves and grabbed a brown nightstick, twisting the cord around his knuckles.
There were four men around the Mercedes, all dressed in long gray coats and brown fedoras, brims folded down to catch the rain. They separated when they saw Bobby approach, smiles on their faces but menace in their eyes.
Ray Monte stood in the middle, right leg up against a rear hubcap, thin cigar in his mouth.
“You know the world’s a fucked-up place,” Ray said, “when they go and give a junkie a gun and a badge.”
Bobby walked closer, taking small steps, measuring the men, knowing they were all armed and backed up by a small crew drinking in the dimly lit bar behind him.
“Rain like this must cut into business,