3 Quarters (10 page)

A cherry-wood door led to a nine-by-nine-foot saloon between the kitchen and the master stateroom. The forest green, wall-to-wall carpet needed to be vacuumed and shampooed. The wood-paneled walls were adorned with sepia-colored nautical maps. A cable-wired color TV with built-in VCR dominated the entertainment center, which also included a radio and CD stereo system. The saloon was equipped with a desk and two barrel chairs. Sliding windows with screens faced uptown toward the George Washington Bridge. The convertible sofa was covered with corduroy throw pillows.

Gleason pointed to another wooden door, and Bobby entered the master stateroom, a nine-by-eightfoot cedar-lined affair with a full-sized berth and storage drawers under the bed. The anchored night table next to the bed was equipped with a high-intensity reading lamp. A hanging locker offered ample room for Bobby's few clothes. He slid open a window that looked downtown on the city and let the river air into the room.

“My old man was a real estate lawyer,” Gleason said. “Him and his ‘clients' used to disappear for whole weekends on this baby. When he came home, my mother used to grill him. That's why he named it
The Fifth Amendment.
Him and his buddies spent more time down here in the basement than they did up on the roof.”

“It's called a bridge and a deck,” Bobby said, making a mental note to get a new mattress when he could afford one.

“Whole ship needs a good douche,” Gleason said, squinting around, unwrapping a Reese's peanut-butter cup, plunging it into his mouth.

“Boat,” Bobby said. “A ship is different . . . . Why bother . . .”

Gleason stepped into the master head, a tight, efficient lavatory with a built-in Corian-covered vanity, private head, stall shower. Gleason threw the candy wrapper in the toilet and flushed. It swirled down in a slow, tormented gulp. “A tight squeeze,” Gleason said, sitting on the lid of the bowl, measuring the arm room between the wall and shower stall. “Room for the
Daily News
or the
Post
, sure. Don't even try reading the
Times
on this crapper; no room. Small head.”

“You finally got a name right,” Bobby said.

“I bet I know why they call it that, too,” Gleason said. “You bring a broad in there, no room for anything else . . . .”

Bobby took a deep breath, and Gleason turned on the shower. Rusty water exploded with trapped air from the showerhead, and then finally clear water began to drizzle out in a tired stream.

“Shower's like getting pissed on by an infant, but it'll wash the shitty city down the drain,” Gleason said.

“You ever consider going into real estate?” Bobby asked. “You give one hell of a sales pitch.”

There was another small guest stateroom, big enough for one small person.

Bobby quickly climbed up to the fly deck and scanned the boat basin. Several dozen moored boats lolled gently on the Hudson. He had known cops over the years who had faked overtime, moonlighted on second jobs, taken bribes or loans to buy boats. Highway cops out on patrol were notorious for hiding their patrol car here in the boat basin garage, putting it up on a hydraulic jack, running the motor, and flattening the accelerator with a nightstick to make the wheels spin so that the odometer would show superior officers later that they had cruised the average 120 miles covered on an eight-hour shift. Meanwhile, as Bobby'd heard the stories, they'd be out on a boat, fishing, drinking, playing poker, or getting laid. Most of them wound up living on the boats after their divorces. He always thought of it as guys who left their wives for boats.

Bobby inspected the controls. Like most harbor cops, he was no boating genius. They usually only knew how to start a boat, steer it, and dock it. Bobby didn't know much about mechanical upkeep either, but he could get a feel for a boat by tinkering with the instruments. He felt the play in the helm, working the gyro and the rudder, the hydraulic steering system. The controls seemed to be in working order, just in need of oiling, a hard scrub, a fierce polish, some calibration, and lots of TLC. He was starting to imagine the boat with a major cleaning and a week's attention. It would be a fine flop until he could find something better.

No one would be banging the steel.

“Everything under the hood works,” Gleason said. “Thing about boats though, they eat like racehorses. Fuel costs money. Which I don't have a lot of. But I started an account at the fuel dock, and you can take gas and charge it to me when you're using it on my time. Otherwise, I'll rely on your cornball honor to pay for your own time.”

“Keys and registration?” Bobby asked, holding out his hand, walking for the exit ramp.

Gleason handed him a set of keys to the boat and the appropriate papers. Then he dangled the keys to the Jeep Cherokee.

“The car is all that's left of my marriage,” Gleason said, a tinge of genuine sadness in his voice as he rattled the keys like altar bells. “So take care of it . . . .”

Bobby nodded.

“I'm putting Venus on a bus to the fat farm tonight,” Gleason said, brightening again. “The nutritionist says she'll be a size seven when she comes out, and she shows her everlasting appreciation.
Comprendo?”

“You are one very sick ticket,” Bobby said, grabbing Gleason's wrist again to look at the time: 12:21
PM.

As Bobby reached the dock, he suddenly noticed a familiar-looking white Ford Taurus parked on the rotunda above the boat basin.
It can't be,
he thought.

“You got a camera or a pair of binoculars on the boat?” Bobby asked quickly.

“No,” Gleason said. “Why?”

Bobby pointed to the car, sitting with its motor idling.

“Whadda you expect? You went into Gibraltar Security, terrorized the help, and now they aren't allowed to follow you around? You should have spotted the tail on the way up here, Sherlock.”

“I checked my rearview all the way,” Bobby said. “This guy is good . . . . I have to run that bastard's plate. You have a cell phone?”

“Not here,” Gleason said. “In my office . . .”

“Y
ou
have an office in the Empire State Building?” Bobby said, surprised, as he pulled to the curb on Thirty-fourth Street beside the towering skyscraper.

“It's more than a name,” Gleason said. “Having an office in the Empire State Building is like being hung like a horse.
Pegasus
. It gives me stature. Professional virility. See, it's a piece of history. It's got ten million fuckin' bricks, twenty-seven miles of elevator rails, sixty-four hundred windows. It's fourteen hundred feet tall and weighs three hundred and sixty-five thousand mother-jumpin' tons. Now, if that ain't hung like the Trojan horse, what the fuck is?”

“Where did you learn all that shit?” Bobby asked as he opened the car door and stepped out into the lunch crowd, craning his neck like everyone else to look up at the building thrown into the sky by immigrant workers in 1931.

“The Jap real estate broker gave me a brochure with every stat in it except the circumference of King Kong's balls,” Gleason said. “But I read it, and I thought to myself, if New York is the Cadillac of American cities, then the Empire State Building is the hood ornament. And I'm climbin' in for the ride. Since I'm the best fuckin' lawyer in this city, it makes sense this address is on Izzy Gleason's business card.”

Izzy tugged Bobby's sleeve, telling him to park in the garage under the great skyscraper. But Bobby kept staring up at the awesome colossus.

“Wanna buy a fuckin' bridge, too?” Gleason said. “What, you were absent that day in third grade when they had the school trip? Come on, let's go . . .”

Bobby ignored Gleason and instead stood among the tourists with their video cameras and Nikons, staring up at the great spire.
Dorothea. We were here together. And we could see it all the way from Brooklyn. She loved the eternal winking red light at the very top. I told her it was a warning light for low-flying planes. “Be careful,” she said. “It's also a warning that I am going to hold you to your promise of marrying me, Bobby Emmet.”

The next day, when they visited the observation deck, Bobby used the binoculars to point out his Brooklyn apartment. He told her to pick a wedding date. Soon. He wanted to have a family and a life together. She grew as excited as a child, making him promise that wherever they bought their house, they'd be able to see the winking red light at the top of the Empire State Building.

“Why?” Bobby had asked her, laughing.

She looked at him on that bright windy day, her eyes filled with childish wonder, her high cheekbones rosy with winter cold, her hair flapping from beneath her beret. “No matter whatever happens,” she said, “that red light will always be my heart beating for you.
Ya tebe kohayu.”

“Then pick a date,” Bobby had said.

“I can't,” she had said. “Not yet.”

And would never tell him why . . . .

“Yo, before a pigeon uses you for target practice,” Gleason asked, breaking Bobby's reverie. “Let's go . . .”

“Grab your bag,” Gleason said as they found a spot in the underground garage and parked. “I have a terrific shower in my office.”

Bobby was impressed that Gleason would use the stairs to keep in some kind of shape. He followed Gleason into the fire stairs and began the slow climb. When they got to the top of the first flight, Gleason was panting. He paused to light a cigarette, then pulled open the door marked in large black letters BASEMENT. It led to a corridor.

“Quitting already?” Bobby mocked, thinking they were walking to an elevator.

“We've arrived,” Gleason said as he jingled his keys and walked down a dingy, fluorescent-lit corridor, past a door marked JANITOR and another marked ELECTRICAL CLOSET. He stopped in front of a plain black door bearing the simple legend IZZY GLEASON, ESQ., Room B-378.

“Your office is in the
basement
of the Empire State Building?” Bobby asked, incredulous. “If you were a duck, you'd fly north for the winter.”

“And still run into jailbird clients like you,” Gleason said with a shrug.

“Actually the basement is a step up in the world for you, Gleason,” Bobby said.

“Yeah, and I like the burgers in the coffee shop,” Gleason said, unlocking the door and pushing it open. “Plus, it's centrally located. The higher the floor, the more the rent. Those high-roller days are behind and ahead of me. Right now, I'm stuck in neutral, so I make do. Besides, I don't do any work in the office. But
you
will.”

Gleason switched on the lights. A few rods of overhead fluorescent tubing blinked to life. One bulb remained half-lit and hummed. Gleason bent and picked up the mail—Con Ed and NYNEX bills and a large envelope with a Police Athletic League return address.

“I need the phone,” Bobby said. “I want to run that plate.”

Gleason tore open his mail as Bobby looked around at the stacks of newspapers, magazines, and bulging blue-back legal folders.

“Good thing you are in the basement,” Bobby said. “If a client walked in here, he'd want to jump out the window.”

Bobby stepped past a large leather recliner, through the debris on the floor—old candy wrappers and soda cans, yellowed newspapers. A big, black manual typewriter sat on a gray metal desk; it looked old enough for Mark Twain to have used it. Boxes of candy were stacked on both sides of the old typewriter, and Izzy was already popping chocolates into his mouth.

Gleason handed Bobby the contents of the PAL envelope; it was an NYPD parking permit, allowing a car to be parked almost anywhere on city streets. “I told your brother, Patrick, you'd need it,” Gleason said. “It's worth its weight in gold.”

Gleason walked behind the desk, sat in an old green leather swivel chair, unlocked the bottom desk drawer, and pulled it open. He removed a cellular phone and a Smith and Wesson .38 revolver and placed them on the desktop. He took off his Tag Heuer watch and placed it on the desk, too. Bobby looked from the gun to Gleason, who rocked in the swivel chair.

Bobby dialed a number and asked for John Shine, who was out. He called the 72nd Precinct, asked for Officer Tom Larkin, and the desk sergeant said he was working the four-to-twelve shift. He called Patrick and got an answering machine. He left a message saying he'd call back in a couple of hours. He tried Max Roth at the
Daily News
, hoping he could run the plate with the computer in the newspaper library. The receptionist said Roth was out on assignment, so Bobby was connected to his voice mail. “Max, this is Bobby. I need a couple of favors. I need a license plate run. But in the meantime, could you get an intern to do a ‘Where Are They Now' computer search on all the principals in my case? Defense, prosecution, cops, witnesses. Everybody. I just need an update. Thanks. I'll call again later.”