Skells Read online

  SKELLS

  The Midtown Blue Series

  The Deuce

  The Crossroads

  Skells

  © 2006 by F. P. Lione

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Ebook edition created 2011

  Ebook corrections 9.25.2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-3726-2

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Scripture marked NIV is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

  Times Square and the other New York City landmarks described in this book exist, as do any recognizable public figures. But this is a work of fiction. The events and characters are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to any actual events or people, dead or living, is entirely coincidental.

  The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.

  To our Lord Jesus Christ,

  the Light of the World.

  Your Word is a lamp to our feet

  and a light to our path.

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  1

  In Times Square, the crossroads of the world, spring doesn’t show up like it does in other places. We don’t have birds, we have pigeons—flying rats we call them. And they don’t migrate. They spend the winter dropping all over the Father Duffy statue in front of the TKTS theater ticket booth and playing chicken with the pedestrians trying to walk by. Sure, the skirts are shorter, the streets are more crowded, and baseball is in the air. But mostly we know it’s spring by the distinctive smell of urine and rotting garbage, and by the skells that come out from whatever hole they crawled into over the winter.

  My name is Tony Cavalucci, and this is my eleventh year as a New York City cop. Except for the six months I spent at FTU, or Field Training Unit, in Coney Island, I’ve worked my entire career here in Midtown Manhattan.

  Skells is our name for crackheads, homeless, prostitutes, chicken hawks, and other lowlifes that make up the dregs of society. I used to look at them that way. Lately they just look lost and wounded to me, but I still call them skells.

  They make up a good portion of the population here in Midtown, at least the population that smokes crack, urinates in public, prostitutes itself for drugs, has open containers of alcohol, and jumps turnstiles. We do a lot of sweeps now, getting them off the street early in the night for the little stuff, so we don’t have to come back later when they really get cooking.

  It was the last week of April 2001, and the city finally sent a crew to the precinct to fix the heating system. We spent half the winter with the heat blowing cool air, making us put cardboard inside the vents to keep the chill out. Now that spring was here, the vents were finally blowing hot air, making the precinct feel like a sauna.

  The city jumped straight from winter to summer. Instead of temperatures in the 60s and 70s like we normally get this time of year, the numbers were up in the high 80s, inching toward the 90 degree mark. I’m sure the papers will have the scientists speculating about global warming and all the other doomsday crap they come up with every time there’s a change in the weather.

  I was standing in the muster room, waiting for roll call to start. The muster room is a dingy thirty-by-thirty-foot room where roll call takes place. Aside from the podium where the sarge speaks, there’s an old metal desk, vending machines, and old wooden benches that run along the walls. The walls are full of crime statistics, bios of perps, and missing persons pictures that nobody looks at.

  I was reading a flyer for the second retirement party we’ve had this month. It was for Brian Gallagher, an old-timer who had done most of his time here at the South. The flyer had a picture of a fat guy on a lounge chair under a palm tree, with a hat over his head and a drink with an umbrella in his hand. Under the caption “Brian Gallagher Is Retiring” someone had written, “Why? The job is so great!” and “This job sucks.” They drew a picture of a keg with an IV hooked up to the guy’s arm, pretty much summing up Brian Gallagher. The party was at an Irish pub up on 45th Street. It was thirty bucks a head, with food and an open bar.

  Originally I wasn’t going to go to the party, but my partner, Joe Fiore, and I have court the day of the party and would be working a day tour. I looked around for Terri Marks, a female cop with about eighteen years on, who works behind the desk. She was collecting the money for the party and I spotted her over by the desk, talking to Nick Romano. She was beautiful once, red hair, light blue eyes. But after almost two decades of wear and tear from the job, she looked worn-out as an old boot. No pension is ever gonna give that back.

  “Hey, Nick, Terri,” I said as I walked over to them and shook Romano’s hand.

  “You going to Brian Gallagher’s party, Tony?” Terri asked.

  “Yeah, here’s for me and Joe,” I said, pulling out three twenties.

  “Fiore’s going too?” She smiled and raised her eyebrows.

  “Forget it, Ter, it’s never gonna happen,” I told her. She had a thing for Fiore that he politely ignored. She was probably hoping to get a few drinks into him to loosen him up, but that was never gonna happen either.

  “Never say never, Tony,” she said, writing our names down on her legal pad.

  “How’s it goin’, Nick?” I asked Romano.

  He looked like he was hurting from too much drinking. I knew he’d been going to the bar over on 9th Avenue in the mornings, but I haven’t said anything to him about it. Last year Joe and I found out Romano’s father had been a cop and was killed in the line of duty. He was shot in the face during a domestic dispute. Romano’s been a cop for a few years now, and he hates it. He also has a baby with his self-absorbed ex-girlfriend, and they’re in court all the time over visitation and any other petty thing she can come up with. It all seems to be wearing on him. A couple of months ago he found out he’d be going over to the fire department. I thought he’d be happier about it, but he’s still miserable.

  “Pretty good, nineteen more days of this crap and I’m outta here,” Romano said with feeling. (He didn’t say crap, but I’m editing here.)

  “I hear ya,” I said. “Pretty soon you’ll be one of New York’s Noisiest.”

  Romano smiled. “That’s New York’s Bravest, Tony.”

  “If you say so.”

  “How come you never went over to FD?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I took the test. I got a 96 on the written test, but I was hungover for the physical and I only got an 85. I think I needed a 90 on the physical to have a high enoug
h average to get in.”

  “I made sure I got 100 on both tests,” he said. “I quit smoking for the physical, and I was running five miles a day by the time I took it. I started smoking again after I took the test, but at least I got in.”

  “The Fire Academy is up on Randall’s Island, right?” I asked.

  “Yeah, you ever been there?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I went to a softball tournament up there for a cop who was killed up in the Bronx,” I said. “How long is the Academy?”

  “Twelve weeks; I think I graduate like August 7.”

  “Can’t wait to leave us, Nick?” Fiore slapped him on the back when he walked over.

  “You know it,” Romano said, shaking his hand.

  I started working with Joe Fiore last June when my old partner, John Conte, hurt his knee and wound up having surgery. John came back in December on limited duty, but he was out again having a second surgery on the knee. I had been drinking my way out of being dumped by my old girlfriend Kim and dealing with my psychotic family when I wound up with Joe. The summer was just starting, and the last thing I wanted was some do-gooder telling me how Jesus was the answer to all my problems. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me that the beach, the bar, and a willing woman wouldn’t cure. When things crashed down around me, Fiore was standing there when the smoke cleared, and he’s been there ever since.

  It was through Fiore that I met my fiancée, Michele, last July. She’s a schoolteacher from Long Island and has a little boy, Stevie, who will be five next month. I’m crazy about the both of them, and in February I got down on one knee with a rock in my hand and a lump in my throat and asked her to marry me. She said yes, and we set the date for November.

  “Hey, the guido patrol!” McGovern, one of the cops from our squad, said to Joe, Romano, and me as he came upstairs. “How’s the paesanos tonight?”

  “Good, just planning our next hit,” I said, but he was right, we looked like a bunch of guidos. Joe was taller than Nick and me, closer to six feet, while Romano and I were a couple of inches shorter and stockier. Romano and I had more olive skin than Joe and we both had straight black hair, where Joe’s was wavier. They both had brown eyes and mine were hazel, but aside from mixing the features around, all three of us were full-blooded Italians and would never pass for anything else.

  Sergeant Hanrahan gave the attention to the roll call order as we filed in. Hanrahan was alone tonight. Usually Sergeant Courtney was here with him, but she had gallbladder surgery and wouldn’t be back for another week.

  As we mustered up, John Quinn came in with Rice and Beans from the four-to-twelve shift with a collar. It was six collars actually, all drunk and beaten bloody. Four of them were cuffed together hand to hand, chain gang style. The other two were cuffed individually, with their hands behind their back. These two must have been the rabble-rousers, because they were yelling in Spanish, trying to kick the others. They looked like a band of migrant workers and smelled like a brewery.

  They were all short, I doubt there was one over five foot six. They were wearing various styles of work boots, filthy jeans, and sweat-stained or bloodstained T-shirts.

  Lieutenant Conlan peered at Quinn over his glasses and smirked. “Whaddaya got, John?” he asked.

  “Lou, I caught them trying to cross the border,” Quinn said, expressionless in his jaded way, pitching the squad into fits of laughter.

  Rooney yelled out “Cerveza!” to the perps.

  They nodded their heads and smiled. “Si, cerveza.”

  “Well, get your border crossing in the back—they stink,” the lou said with a scowl.

  “Sure, Boss,” Quinn said.

  “This way, amigos,” he said, taking them toward the cells in the back.

  “The color of the day is orange,” Hanrahan said once the laughter died down, designating the citywide color code we use to identify undercover and plainclothes cops so nobody gets shot when they reach for their badges.

  “O’Brien,” the sarge called.

  “Here.”

  “McGovern.”

  “Here, Sarge.”

  “Charlie-Frank, 1887, four o’clock meal.” That indicated their sector, meal time, and the number of the RMP they’d be driving.

  Our command is broken up into eight sectors. Adam-Boy handles Grand Central, Park Avenue, some of the consulates and embassies for the UN, and two active abortion clinics. Charlie-Frank handles Madison Square Garden, Penn Station, the Empire State Building, and the main post office for New York City on 8th Avenue. David-George, which is mine and Fiore’s sector, handles the bulk of the garment district and 34th Street. Eddie-Henry handles Times Square, Port Authority, part of the theatre district, and 42nd Street between 7th and 8th avenues. The old-timers call that sector the Deuce.

  Hanrahan gave out the sectors, the foot posts, and the return date for C-summons. If we wrote a summons today, that’s the date the person would have to go to court. He looked around at us before speaking again, then he looked past us to the doorway of the muster room. We turned and saw the inspector standing there.

  “Uh, Inspector O’Connor is here to address the roll call,” he said, not looking at us.

  Inspector O’Connor came to the precinct a couple of months ago. Most inspectors come in soft. Not O’Connor—he was a big mouth with a big hook somewhere that got him a spot at the largest command in the city. He came in strong with his new oak leaves on his shoulders, picturing himself as a deputy borough chief at his next gig. Whoever his hook was, they had pull.

  He walked up to the podium and looked around the room, his usual plastered smile gone and his face set in anger. We were all wary of him. He carried himself like a politician instead of a cop, and he had a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” managerial approach.

  “Today was my second COMSTAT as commander of this precinct,” he started, his eyes burning into us. “What I would like to know is why four geisha houses were closed in this command and I wasn’t notified.” He scanned the room again. “Under the padlock law, when a house of prostitution is closed down, it is padlocked and an ID sheet accompanies a request to add the premise to the padlock target list. This list lets COMSTAT know that these were prostitution houses. Imagine my surprise when four of these were closed down in my command and I had no documentation on it and didn’t fill out the padlock forms before the meeting.” He was seething, saying all of this like he was choking on it. “I will never be made a fool of again for not knowing what’s going on in my own command.”

  Geisha houses or massage parlors are houses of prostitution, or pros as we call them. OCCB or Organized Crime Control Bureau must have closed the houses and didn’t give the inspector the heads-up. The inspector was only partially to blame—he’s new and didn’t know about the geisha houses, but it’s his command and he should have bothered to find out.

  COMSTAT was initiated by a former chief of police to use statistics to track crime patterns and response times, and to isolate problem areas and then hold the commands responsible for them. The brass hate COMSTAT because they never want to be the ones called on the carpet for a problem in their command. The cops love COMSTAT because it gives the brass the trots.

  “OCCB closed them down,” Rooney yelled out. “It’s their responsibility to notify you when they close a geisha house.”

  “Now I’m making it your responsibility to notify me,” the inspector said, smiling like a snake about to bite. “Everyone on patrol has to gather information for me on known geisha houses; I want intel reports from each sector—”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Rooney said. “We’re answering jobs all night.”

  “If a geisha house is operating in one of your sectors and I don’t get an intel report on it,” the inspector said icily, “you’ll walk for a month”—meaning we’d be on a foot post on 8th Avenue somewhere. He stormed out of the roll call, leaving us stunned for a second.

  “Is this guy for real?” Garcia asked.

>   “Boss, that walking for thirty days,” Rooney asked, “will that be in front of the geisha house?”

  Hanrahan started to smirk as the comments came up from the ranks.

  “Me love you long time.”

  “Two dollar, two minute.”

  We all laughed and then heard the inspector’s door slam. His office is behind the muster room. If the inspector thought us goofing on him was the end of it, he was kidding himself. We were just warming up. This was war.

  The boss ended the roll call with, “By the way, I have some notifications here,” then he looked through the slips and read off Cavalucci, Rooney, Connelly, and a couple of other names. When we made our way up to the podium for him to hand out the court notifications, he gave me a letter in a sealed envelope.

  “Looks like a letter from the Advocate’s Office,” Hanrahan said. His usual salt-and-pepper hair had more salt lately, and his blue eyes looked sympathetic.

  “The Advocate’s Office?” I asked, confused.

  “It’s probably some skell and his liberal lawyer saying you violated his civil rights,” he said.

  Hanrahan was a good boss, and in all the years he’s been my sergeant, he’s done the right thing by me. Last June, when he put me with Fiore and said I could learn a lot from him, was the first time I was angry with him. I had been drinking a lot, even showing up to work still reeking of booze. He told me he was putting me with Fiore and I couldn’t talk him out of it. He said I could learn a lot from Fiore; turns out he was right.

  “You getting sued, Tony?” Rooney jumped in.

  “I don’t know, Mike, I didn’t open the letter yet,” I pointed out.

  “Hey Tony, how do you stop a lawyer from drowning?” Rooney asked.

  “Shoot him before he hits the water,” I said absently, still looking at the envelope.

  I opened the envelope as Sergeant Hanrahan went to call the sectors in to Central. Central stands for Central Communications, the faceless voices that transmit our jobs to us from the 911 operators.

  The letter stated that I was one of the people being named in a lawsuit for ten million dollars. I was looking at the name, but it wasn’t ringing any bells. The date was for almost a year ago, when I was still working with John Conte. I noticed John’s name wasn’t on the lawsuit. I was hoping it was a mistake and had nothing to do with me.