They talked about the odd things people did, the peculiar way lives were lived. He couldn’t get over the way total strangers confided in him: men and women both, telling him their deepest thoughts and hopes, their sex lives, some of their darkest deeds and regrets. Nick had a sympathetic manner, but he was often uneasy about what was told to him. But he could tell Kathy anything. Actually, whatever he saw or encountered didn’t seem complete until he shared it with her.
Some of the mounting tension between them began as he became more and more involved in the criminal justice system. He couldn’t believe the way the law, as written and practiced, bent over backward to favor the criminal. The bad guys walked free while citizens started to live behind expensive, decorative bars and triple locks and signal devices. He’d lock a guy up and meet him hours later on the street, bailed out or d.o.r.
When Kathy argued that some bad guys were bound to benefit from laws that were necessary to protect the innocent, Nick gave up arguing. Her government classes taught her one thing; his reality showed him another. Nick had never seen an innocent guy stay locked up. He sure as hell saw plenty of guilty perps walk free, grinning at their victims. The randomness of the system was overwhelming. A guy walked on the whim of a judge; on a technicality because someone was careless; or because the DA just couldn’t be bothered, and agreed to a deal without really knowing what was involved. He watched vicious, violent crimes bargained down and adjudicated for time served. And, on occasion, he’d seen the bad guys walk because of something much more sinister: outside interference. Manipulation. Corruption.
Kathy maintained her schoolgirl innocence and confidence. In one bitter argument, he told her he was glad she hadn’t become a lawyer. She’d have that revolving door spinning.
She had influenced him, though, to continue college—and he had to admit he loved his classes at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The courses were repeated, day and night, to accommodate the working tours for the cops going for their degrees. The civilians in the classes didn’t know the way the criminal justice system really worked. They just read the books and the learned opinions. No one told them about the deals cops had to make with the scum of the earth, who would become your informant-partner in order to reach even lower scum. No one taught them the difference between theory and practice.
The kids Kathy taught in her senior high school government classes were suburban kids—mostly from intact families, with an average share of drug, alcohol, and sex abuse in their backgrounds. What she didn’t experience, on a day-to-day basis, was the kind of charged atmosphere in which a mob of high school kids would be ready to kill a best friend or casual acquaintance over a dirty look, an unintentional jostle, an offhand remark. Nick knew those kids—knew where they were coming from. He even knew the sociology behind it all. What he didn’t know was what the fuck was the solution.
The slow decline of their marriage was caused by so many things: his long, irregular hours. His growing inability to discuss his work. Too many disagreements, too much theorizing. Cops tended to socialize with each other, and he admitted that he could be prone to their us-against-them attitude.
But it wasn’t that either. Not really. Partly, it was women. It was a given, on the job; in uniform or out: A cop represented power and authority, and there was a wide and strange contingent of women who were turned on by the idea of a gun, handcuffs, and the absolute power to deprive someone of their liberty, even of their life. Not only submissive women; some very strong, dominant women just wanted, for a brief period of time, not to be the one making the moves and the decisions. It was a form of play, except cops’ wives wouldn’t see it that way.
Nick hadn’t gotten into anything serious; nothing important, anyway. Hell, in this day of AIDS and other diseases, it wasn’t like the days he heard about from the old-timers. There were one or two women he’d met in the course of investigations. One complainant asked him to come over one evening to discuss the case she was involved in as a victim; her businessman husband was out of town and she was alone in her Park Avenue apartment and maybe he could just tell her about one thing or another? Nick would call home: he got stuck on an interview, not to worry.
A whiff of perfume as he stripped off his clothes for his shower gave him away. The feeble explanation—some dweeb of a hooker went around spraying the crap on everyone in the squad room—was met with a cold stare. “They don’t make Chanel in a spray,” his wife observed through tight lips.
After a while, whenever he stayed away from home, whether it was for a legitimate reason or not, he felt guilty. And so of course he acted guilty, and that made him mad. And Kathy madder.
And another problem: Nick’s love of gambling. It started when he was in the service. What the hell else did a young single guy have to do with his time and money? It was fun, recreational. The betting never got too heavy. Sure, a few guys lived from payday to payday wiped out, but sometimes they hit on the numbers; made the point in a dice game; beat the odds in a tight horse race. Played their cards right.
When he was a young cop, he’d pick up a tip—there was always a tip or two floating around the house. Third race at Hialeah, horse named Blame Me—that was irresistible—twenty-to-one and you wouldn’t swear a fix was in, but shit, a fix was in. Sometimes there was a big payoff. Sometimes not. Most times not, but what the hell, you play your walking-around money, not the rent.
He made a lot of excuses to Kathy about short money on pay days: some guy’s kid had a terrible illness that insurance wouldn’t cover, so we all kicked in. There was a big drive for starving kids somewhere in some starving country. A coupla orphans at the scene of a double homicide were dressed in rags; been abused; no food, no toys, nothing. He went a little overboard—fifty bucks—but Christ, Kathy, those kids needed everything and they had nothing.
They spoke about gambling and he tried to explain. Yes, he lost most of the time, but there was always that chance. Someone always wins. He agreed to set a maximum for betting money—not more than she spent on cosmetics, haircuts. Not important money, just walking-around money. But when an absolutely sure thing came along at Aqueduct and he laid down a heavy bet and it paid off—a coupla thousand bucks, for Christ’s sake—how the hell could he not play? After Peter was born, there was just enough money around—at least until Kathy went back to teaching—to cover necessities. He didn’t stop cold—he’d still get into the squad baseball, basketball pools—but he doled out his bets very carefully. Avoided getting into bad situations, which he had done a few times in the past.
As he pulled into his driveway, Peter came toward him, followed by a couple of dogs. The oldest, Woof, was Peter’s. The others were temporary residents. Peter helped out at the local humane society, baby-sitting strays until they were permanently placed.
Nick thumped the dogs one by one, while studying his son. Peter, at twelve, was at the tall and lanky stage. His face was not yet firmly defined; Nick could still see traces of a child’s softness around his mouth. But his eyes, amazingly black and thick-fringed, like his mother’s, no longer held their look of complete innocence and surprise at the world around him.
By the time he worked his way into the house, Nick had managed a quick, hard hug for his son, a jostle with a few of the dogs.
“Mom’s in the kitchen. Dinner’s almost ready.” There was that worried look on the boy’s face. It was hard to reassure him that everything was okay when he knew nothing was okay anymore.
“Take care of these beasts, okay? See you later.”
Kathy was pulling a roast chicken from the oven, and even with her back to him Nick knew exactly what to expect. Her body language was familiar. He moved aside as she put the pan on the counter. She turned to him, waiting.
Her face was so familiar, too, with its traces of the young girl he had married. Slight lines from the corners of her eyes—laugh lines, although he couldn’t seem to make her laugh much anymore. She had her dark brown hair pulled back from her face in a ponytail. She wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand as her large dark eyes narrowed and her mouth tightened. She was still as slim as a girl, and as conditioned as one of her high school students. She had always been considered “cute”: button nose, dimples, that attentive way of holding her head slightly to the side when she listened and got ready to voice her own opinion.
Nick leaned forward and kissed her lightly on her mouth.
“Sorry, babe. We got hung up last night and it was too late to call. Then we got stuck on a fixed post all day …”
“Look, Nick, when you walk out that door, I literally don’t know if you’re ever coming back. With all the crazies out there …” Then she took a deep breath and he knew she had been planning to say this for a long time. “I don’t know if you’re alive or dead. It would help to know, so that I’d be ready for whatever plans I had to make.”
He responded, reacting to her tone. “Hey, if I was dead, someone would have come to let you know. And you wouldn’t have to make any plans. The
department
would handle it. All
you’d
have to do would be to attend.”
Of course, he had gone way too far. He always did when he knew he was wrong. He immediately regretted the pain reflected on her face and caught the way she ground her teeth and blinked hard. She turned away and he reached out for her.
“Hey, babe, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I should have called. Okay, Kath?”
She waited for a moment. “Can we have a nice, family kind of dinner tonight? Peter’s been all tensed up. For once can we at least try to fool him into thinking we’re a normal, happy family?”
“Hey, I can put on an act as good as the next guy.”
She turned the coldest stare in the world on him: her black eyes froze. Kathy was a small woman, and when she thrust her chin up she looked like an angry child, but there was nothing childish about her anger.
“You bastard,” she said softly.
O
NE OF THE SELLING
points when the development was being planned up in Spring Valley was that each of its homes was to be set upon a full acre. Along with the forty-five-minute commute to the city, good schools, nice people, that damn full acre seemed to appeal to all the cops, firemen, sanitation men, and every other type of New York City Civil Service employee looking to get out of Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. Looking to get anywhere, as long as it wasn’t Long Island. It was not as crowded as the island and seemed a bit more laidback: no crowded beaches or day trippers. Mostly year-round homes, with some summer residents and weekenders who would move in permanently after retirement. Block for block, Nick’s neighborhood was probably populated by more guys on the job than anywhere within commuting distance.
As Nick raked the leaves and Peter bagged them, the dogs dove into each new pile, scattering Nick’s work.
A loud voice yelled from the back door, leading to the kitchen. “What’s this all about?” Frank O’Hara, carrying a cellophane garment bag over his shoulder, shook his head. “Petey, you and your dad rake the leaves, the dogs scatter them? And who said you can’t teach old dogs new tricks?”
As Peter led the dogs into the house, he was stopped by his uncle. “Here, kid, take your father’s suit inside.”
It was an implicit dismissal.
Nick leaned on the rake and tensed. He really didn’t need this shit just now.
“Did ya a favor,” his uncle said, “picked up your suit at Clean ‘n’ Carry. Happened to be passing and figured I’d save you the trip.”
Nick nodded without responding, continued to pull the leaves into a pile.
“Jesus, why don’t you break down and get yourself a blower like everybody else? Good for leaves—good for snow. Gonna be a real tough winter, lotta snow coming.”
He hadn’t come to talk about the weather and both men knew it. Frank O’Hara, a deputy inspector in the New York City Police Department, was one of those barrel-chested, wide-shouldered guys you’d want on your side if things got rough. The funny thing was, Frank was one of the gentlest men Nick had ever known. In all the years Nick had lived with Frank and his family, when he was growing up, he’d never seen him do anything more physically threatening than raise his eyebrows and lower his voice in a certain way. That was all he had to do to impress his sons, and Nick.
There was only one time Nick had ever seen Frank hit anyone. The family had been sitting around the kitchen table over hot chocolate one night. His aunt, Mary, got up from time to time to replenish a cup, get more cookies. Frank was a great storyteller and he had everyone roaring over some baseball goof-up he’d witnessed at Yankee Stadium when he was a kid. Frank suddenly flung his arms wide to make a point and caught his wife on the side of her head, knocking her out cold before she even hit the floor.
It was hard to know what was worse for Frank: his absolute horror at what he had done to his wife, or the way the doctors at the emergency room looked at him and coldly asked him what happened.
If any sixty-year-old man could be said to have an innocent face, that would be Frank O’Hara. His soft voice, sweet smile, and sympathetic manner had fooled many a culprit into a confession he seemed to think he was entrusting to a priest.
Frank sat on top of the picnic table that would soon be stored away. Another game of suburbia: take certain items out, store them away again.
Nick dropped his rake and stood in front of his uncle. He used the technique Frank had taught him when he was a kid. Just keep looking into someone’s eyes without any expression whatsoever and wait him out.
Frank knew what he was doing; he shook his head and stood up. “Okay. Okay, Nick. I wanted to talk to you for a minute. Just wanted a word with you, okay?”
“About what?”
“You know damn well about what. Look, the word is out about your grandfather’s party tomorrow.” Even though Frank was no taller than Nick, he always seemed to tower over his nephew. “I’ve been picking up things from all over. There are going to be some very heavy hitters there. From Philly, Miami, Atlantic City. The whole damn East Coast.”