Pigtown Read online

  Casey was a big man with a thick wavy mane, bushy white eyebrows, and a Roman nose that set off his handsome face. The inspector was always referred to in the Job by his full name, Patrick Sarsfield Casey, as a sign of respect.

  “What ya got on the Rutolo homicide?” Casey asked, his large form filling the doorway.

  Stuart looked up from the case folder. “We have people who should have seen the perps, but won’t give them up, and some physical evidence, like heel prints.”

  Going over to peer out through the steel window grating, Casey asked, “Are you going to solve it or dump it into the dustbin?”

  “We’re going to make arrests.”

  Casey turned from the window and focused on a fight card that was framed in shiny black wood. It was on the wall next to the precinct boundary map. The top of the card advertised a middleweight contest between Al “Bummy” Davis and Rocky Graziano on Friday, December 19, 1961, at Madison Square Garden. Casey’s eyes slid from the poster to Stuart’s. Their stares held a shared secret. “Beansy had a lot of friends, in and out of the Job,” Casey said.

  “I know.”

  Casey gazed down into the tiny valley with the weed-covered pigsties. “Pigtown is in its last throes.”

  “This whole command is in its last throes,” Stuart said, waving his hand across the precinct map. “The western part of this shit-house, along Nostrand and Flatbush Avenues, is black and poor. North of Eastern Parkway is loaded with Hasidim, and in the east, Rastafarians, and down here in the south, a few diehard Italians clinging to the past by their fingertips. And none of them like each other. This is September and we’re carrying twenty-six hundred more cases than we had for all of last year.”

  “It’s the same all over the city, Matt, you know that. We’re getting buried in homicides and dope.”

  “That’s true. But the Seven One is the Crown Heights Precinct, remember the riots? When they were burning and looting, and the top brass in this job took cover in temporary headquarters, refusing to let us do our job, waiting for the mayor to give them the go-ahead?”

  “The cops were finally turned loose,” Casey said in admonishment.

  “Yeah, but only after Mattarazzo, the PBA trustee, stormed into the headquarters van, shouting, ‘They’ve been burnin’ and lootin’ for two days, when are we going to take some fucking police action?’”

  Casey held his hands out wide, indicating helplessness. Then he asked, “How long you going to give Beansy?”

  “I can’t take anybody off the chart to work the case, but I’m going to give it as much time as it takes to break it.”

  Casey glanced at the fight card. “I know you figure you owe Beansy for what happened years ago, but keep in mind that the mayor hates the department. So you don’t want to make waves. He’s looking to take it apart and parcel it out to his politically correct scumbag friends in the so-called communities. They’re looking to make one gigantic pork barrel out of this Job, the same way they did with the board of ed., Off-Track Betting, and the department of traffic.”

  “Boss, I figured that one out by myself a long time ago,” Stuart said, wanting to change the subject. He didn’t like talking about city politics or what the politicians had done to the city. “How’s your court case going?”

  “It takes time, but we’re going to win.” Casey’s tone was combative. “It’s unconstitutional to force a man to retire at sixty-three. I’m in my prime, for crissake.” He looked back out the window and said quietly, “I hear Paddy Holiday is involved in the Rutolo homicide.”

  “The woman who owns the house where Beansy was popped is one of his barmaids.” Stuart wondered how Casey had gotten the word so quickly.

  “The Job owes Holiday a fall. He gave up a lot of our undercover operations when he was working Intelligence.”

  “If I ever get the chance to step on him, I will,” Stuart said bluntly.

  “I’m outta here,” Casey said, looking up at the wall clock. “Get me your ‘B’ list.”

  Stuart walked outside into the squad room and over to the command log. He flipped back the hard cover and slid out a manila folder, then returned to his office to hand it to his boss.

  Casey chucked it open and wrote a name and telephone number onto the mimeographed sheet. He looked up at Stuart. “Forty years ago, when I came on the Job, this was called the ‘vulva file.’ Then in the middle seventies, when women started to come into the Job, the name was changed to the ‘significant other file.’ Now it’s the ‘B’ list.”

  “The Job’s an adaptable organization, boss.”

  “I wish it wasn’t so fucking adaptable,” he said, slipping the folder onto Stuart’s desk. “I signed out at the borough to here, so if my wife is looking for me, she’ll call here. Tell her I’m at the Rutolo homicide. I’m going to be at the K of C, playing poker, drinking malt whiskey, and smoking cigars. What the hell’s happened to this world? Martha gets on my case if I drink or smoke at home. It’s not politically correct to smoke in any precinct or squad room because the pussies in the Job are afraid of getting cancer.”

  Stuart smiled broadly. “It’s not that bad, Inspector.”

  “Bullshit it ain’t. I bet if I looked inside the precinct icebox, I wouldn’t find one six-pack. But I’d sure as hell find a lot of Perrier and rabbit food.” At the door he turned and, looking at Stuart, asked, “Anyone in your life yet?”

  “No.”

  “Shit-can the past and get yourself a life already.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “That’s because you can’t get out of your own head.” Reaching for the knob, Casey said, “You’ll know you have it made with a woman when you find yourself making love to her and not her pussy.”

  The blowups of the heel prints found at the crime scene were pinned to the corkboard in Stuart’s office. Black lines highlighted the points of identification: an embedded pebble, a chipped nail head, the manufacturer’s “Anvil” trademark, a badly worn down right side.

  Borrelli, Jones, Kahn, and Jerry Jordon were standing around in the whip’s office, listening to their boss analyze the print.

  Stuart, one arm draped over a five-drawer file cabinet, was studying the photographs of Beansy and the blood trail. “Whoever made that heel print was slew footed. See how the left heel is worn down only on the right side?” He went over to the board and looked at the enlargements of the photographs that had been taken of the scene, overhead views snapped by a detective from the right seat of one of the aviation unit’s helicopters. That tiny valley, four or five blocks long, with the few remaining battered houses with peeling porches and empty pigpens, collapsed chicken coops, set against a background of today … modern apartment houses, supermarkets, garages, rows of cramped two-family brick houses, the past squeezed almost out of existence by the present.

  The telephone on the whip’s desk rang. Kahn snapped it up. “Kahn, Seven One Squad.” She covered the mouthpiece, looked at Borrelli, and said, “It’s Laura, she wants to know if you’re here.”

  “Tell her I’m on patrol.”

  She tossed the receiver at him. “Tell her yourself.…”

  Grabbing the phone and slipping his hand over the mouthpiece, Borrelli glared at Kahn and said, “Detective Kathy Career’s feminism is showing.”

  “Fuck you, Lance Romance,” she said to Borrelli, shaking her trademark brushed-gold bangles down to her wrist.

  Borrelli cupped his hand around the receiver and whispered into the mouthpiece.

  Jerry Jordon, a wiry guy with hazel eyes and a latticework of thin steel gray hair on the sides of his head, had nineteen years on the Job and liked to make love to his wife of twenty-two years, play with his four kids, and drive stock cars in his off-duty time. He spoke up for the first time in the meeting. “That Russo dame and her neighbor could give the whole thing up if they wanted to.”

  “Yeah,” Stuart said, nodding his head in agreement. Looking at Borrelli, he added, “You and Jones dig into Terrella’s backg
round, see if there isn’t something there we can use as a lever to pry her open.”

  “What about Russo?” Kahn asked.

  “I’ll check her out,” Stuart said.

  Borrelli looked over at the wall clock. “Want us to get right on it?”

  Stuart checked the time; it was six-fifty. “The morning’ll do.”

  The detectives walked slowly out of the office.

  Stuart leaned back in his seat, listening to the flood of police calls coming over the Squad’s radio. Ten-ten, man with a gun on Kingston and Union; ten-ten, man shot at Nostrand and Midwood; ten-ten, drug sales, Crown and Utica; ten-thirty, robbery in progress, Flatbush and Winthrop; ten-ten, screams for help, President and Troy.

  Suddenly street sounds were overpowered by the wailing of police sirens as the Seven One’s radio motor patrol cars responded to the emergency calls. Soon all twelve of the precinct’s RMPs were out of service on jobs. The patrol lieutenant’s crusty voice crackled over the radio, ordering the precinct’s plainclothes anticrime and narcotics units to pick up jobs. Stuart looked at the speakers standing on top of the file cabinets and thought, Stereophonic misery.

  3

  A pale moon peeked out from behind the clouds as Matt Stuart walked into Junior’s restaurant in downtown Brooklyn. He liked Junior’s because it was one of the few eateries left that still put bowls of pickles and coleslaw on the tables along with a basket of rolls. He slid in behind a burgundy-colored banquette and looked up at the Tiffany lampshade look-alikes before his eyes surveyed the circular counter as he looked for the man he was supposed to meet. He hadn’t showed yet.

  Matt looked at the time; it was seven-thirty. He speared a sour pickled tomato onto the small plate and cut into it. Juice squirted out. He was gazing out the large plate-glass window, watching the comings and goings of LIU students across Flatbush Avenue, when the waiter, a skinny, maniacally cheerful guy from Bangladesh, came over to take his order: corned beef on onion rye, a salad, and a side of onion rings.

  As the waiter walked off, scribbling the order on his soiled pad, Matt reached into the basket, broke off a piece of skinny pumpernickel, tossed it into his mouth, and resumed gazing out the window, his mind resurrecting that long-ago Sunday, a week before Christmas 1961, when he was eleven and his parents took him downtown to the Fox to see the movie Pinocchio. Afterward they went to Junior’s for dinner. His dad left them right after dessert because he had to rush to the Seven One to do a four-to-twelve. Matt’s life was never the same after that damn Sunday.

  The waiter brought over his order. Stuart had just bitten into his sandwich when the stink of clinging cigarette smoke made him look up. The man standing by his table was wearing blue warm-ups with red piping and air-cushioned Nikes that looked like moon shoes. Stuart patted the empty space next to him on the banquette.

  Detective Carmine Vuzzo sucked in his gut as he squeezed into the booth and picked up one of Stuart’s onion rings. “So why the call?” he said, tossing the chunk into his mouth.

  “How’s Intelligence?” Stuart asked, licking a smear of mustard off his finger.

  Vuzzo combed his fingers through his thick head of black hair and said, “Going downhill like the rest of the Job.” More onion rings, a sly smile. “So? What’s up?”

  “Beansy got himself whacked this morning. My squad caught the case.”

  “I heard.” He grabbed a pickle out of the bowl, snapped it in half, and tossed one end into his mouth. “How long’s it been, three years since we talked? And now you call me when some wiseguy gets himself whacked.”

  “Yeah. Sorry, but this one is special for me.”

  Vuzzo still wasn’t happy. “You could’a called once or twice to see how we’re doin’, Mary and the kids. Little Joey is your godson.”

  “Life is full of could’as, Carmine.”

  Vuzzo tossed in the other half of the pickle and said, “You were always good with the cards, though, birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries, I’ll give ya that.”

  Matt leaned close and said, “After Beansy got hit, I figured I’d reach out to the Job’s resident expert on the Gambino crime family for help.”

  A big smile creased Vuzzo’s face. “I bet most people you’ve spoken to tell you what a terrific guy ol’ Beansy was.”

  “Yeah, that’s the song I’ve been hearing.”

  “It’s all bullshit,” Vuzzo said scornfully. “He was a killer like the rest of them. Only he got off on playing Mister Rogers.” Another one of Stuart’s onion rings went into his mouth before he folded his arms across the table, one on top of the other, and said, “Lemme tell you a story ’bout ol’ Beansy. Neil Dellacroce, the Gambino underboss, dies, and Paulie Castellano bypasses John Gotti and makes Tommy Bilotti the new underboss.” He plucked a pickle out of the bowl and bit it in half. “Big Paulie hates Gotti’s guts and don’t wanna see him, so he don’t go to Neil’s wake. That’s a serious breach of wiseguy etiquette, and pissed a lotta people off at Paulie. Paulie, not being any fool, wants to make things right with Neil’s son, Buddy, so he asks Beansy to set up a meet with Buddy so he can offer his personal condolences. Beansy sets it up at Sparks Steakhouse. So, as you know, when Paulie and Tommy B arrive at Sparks, Beansy is waiting outside, all smiles. Paulie and Tommy get out of the car, and Gotti’s shooters run up to them and give ’em a lead tarantella. Beansy walks over to Paulie, his lifelong paisan, bends down and calmly feels for a pulse that ain’t there, and walks off down the street. A really caring person.”

  Stuart ate the last of his sandwich and said, “Then Beansy had enemies.”

  “All those guys got enemies. Sometimes they harbor grudges for years before payback time.”

  “Whose ‘get even’ list was Beansy on?”

  Vuzzo threw up his hands in frustration and said, “Who knows? Like most of them, the list is endless.”

  “What’s the real story on that cheese business of his?”

  “Around the turn of the century his grandfather finagled the license as sole importer of Bolonia cheese in this country. And that license is passed on from generation to generation. Beansy had big bucks coming in from that business. That’s why he didn’t give a shit about going higher in the crew.”

  Stuart casually changed the topic, asking, “What do you hear on Paddy Holiday these days?”

  Vuzzo pulled a sour face that revealed a mouthful of badly capped teeth and said, “His name keeps cropping up on wires. His latest scam is brokering junk deals between drug guys and Rastafarians.”

  “Why would anyone use him as go-between?”

  “Because none of the drug crews trust niggers. They won’t deal with them. So our distinguished retired sergeant brokers and cuts himself a taste.”

  “Ever hear of a couple of gals named Andrea Russo and Mary Terrella?”

  “Not off the top of my head. I’ll check the files and get back to you.” Vuzzo was clearly not going to get any deeper into this; there was a note of finality in his voice.

  Stuart’s gaze fixed on the pickle bowl, to the green juice and little yellow seeds, and he asked softly, “How’s Pat?”

  “She’s okay. She was dating some asshole lawyer who only knew from trusts and acquisitions. She gave him the ol’ heave about a month ago.” He looked Stuart in the eyes and said, “Why don’t you give her a call?”

  Stuart felt a tightness in his chest. “What for? When your sister walked, she walked for good.”

  “Why don’t you get fucking real? You could still get her back.”

  He looked at his former brother-in-law and said, “That part of my life is dead.”

  LaGuardia Community College is housed in a group of gray, flat-roofed converted factory buildings clustered along Queens Boulevard at the foot of the upper ramp of the Queensboro Bridge. The main building on the campus used to be a chewing gum factory.

  After leaving Junior’s, Matt drove to the college and parked across the street from the school in the driveway of a bank, so that the front of his car
was facing the college. Because he was the whip of a busy squad and was always on call, he was given a “category one” auto to take home with him. It was a dark blue Buick Regal that had a telephone and a department radio that received all the uniform and detective bands.

  As he sat behind the wheel, watching students entering and leaving the buildings, he realized that most of them looked older than regular college kids; they weren’t dressed in trendy baggy clothes but had on less stylish outfits. Many looked tired, as though they had put in a day’s work before going to school. He had heard some Queens cops from the One Fourteen talking one day while waiting to testify in court, and they’d referred to LaGuardia College as Crayola U. But he also knew that the students who went there called it the Last Chance Saloon.

  During the drive there he kept chiding himself for having asked Carmine about Pat. He hadn’t planned on doing that; it had just popped out. He had thought he’d gotten over her. His hands tightened around the steering wheel.

  Despite the bright street lighting, Matt almost didn’t spot her walking out of the main campus building. She was wearing stonewashed jeans, white Keds, and a brown sweater stretched down almost to her knees. Her hair was pulled back in a pony-tail, and she had an olive-green gas mask case, U.S. Army issue, slung over her left shoulder. He figured her books were inside. He got out of the car and called out her name. She froze in her tracks and did a slow about-face. When she spotted him across the street, waving, she seemed to wilt, suddenly looking older. She walked slowly across the street toward Stuart, watching the oncoming traffic.

  Approaching him reluctantly, she cast a wary eye inside the car and asked, “What do you want?”

  “I thought I’d offer you a ride home.”

  “The last charmer who made me that offer stuck a gun in my face and made me give ’im a blow job.”