Eddy inhales a menthol with vacant confidence, a man who isn’t wrong even when he’s wrong.
“Eddy,” I tell him, “something’s not right about this guy. You know?”
“Hey, Ronny, I been at this a long time, I know when something’s off. This guy’s perfect. He assumes he can throw money at anything, make it go away, so he can act any way he wants. Didn’t even hesitate, like, forty? That’s it?”
“I don’t know. The guy never looked at me, never once. Wasn’t right.”
“Trust me. This is right as it gets.”
Schalaci comes back out of the Citibank.
“Lets go back up to my apartment,” he says.
Eddy nods like it’s a good idea and charges forward, heavy eyes squinting in the morning light.
Eddy is spent when we get back up to the apartment, wheezing and coughing. Ms. Schalaci gets him a paper towel from the kitchen and Eddy wipes himself down.
“Detective?” asks Schalaci, pushy. “This way.”
We follow him into the study. I see Ms. Schalaci out of corner of my eye, following us. Margaret Gallo.
Schalaci turns. I mean, Woodrow Collins turns. Woody. Asshole.
I leave the door open behind us. Eddy coughs and coughs. He doesn’t notice the door. Eddy is the best police impersonator. But he doesn’t notice a lot.
Schalaci holds out an envelope. Eddy coughs.
“Forty?” he asks.
Schalaci nods. My pulse is a jackhammer.
Eddy covers his mouth with the paper towel. He reaches with his other hand, nodding. He coughs into the towel. He takes the envelope.
My name is Eddie Schalaci. I am Eddie Schalaci again.
Detective first-grade Woody Collins, a.k.a. the phony Schalaci, takes out his badge and shows it to Eddy, whose eyes swell with disbelief.
“Eddy May, you’re under arrest for impersonating a police officer, extortion, accessory to child prostitution, and child abuse.”
Detective third-grade Margaret Gallo, a.k.a. Ms. Rebecca Schalaci, covers us from behind, her badge in one hand, her service pistol in the other.
I’m detective second-grade Eddie Schalaci, a.k.a. Ronny Hertz. I don’t pull out my badge. Mine is already showing in the breast of my detective’s blazer.
For Pop’s eulogy, I talked about his humor, how when I began going bald he told me, “Ed, I got a way you can save your hair.” He showed me an empty cigar box. “Save it in here.” I talked about how he loved giving people nicknames, he called his brother Whiney because his friend Whiney left Bensonhurst and Pop missed him. He called a guy Johnny Once, because he only came around once in a while. I talked about his devotion to my mother, who died when I was born, and how that was the first of the many ways I disappointed him. Some laughed, but others just stared with hard, narrow brows. I didn’t mention the raid, less than a year before his death and the start of the indulgence that killed him. I didn’t mention his devotion to Scotch, and the other powders and pills that he unsuccessfully hid from me. All I could think of was the night in that Midtown bar when he told me about the raid, and I told him I didn’t know.
Shackled, head hanging in defeat, Eddy stares at the floor between his plain black shoes as Detective Woody Collins tries to get him to confess to more crimes. That was how Pop looked. He was beyond the rage he had a right to. He was broken, too old or helpless to even be mad about it. Eddy, his frown heavy like wet clay, is unreachable.
“We’re gonna appeal to the pedophile community, Eddy. Make a deal. They’ll come out the woodwork once they find out about you.”
Collins looks at me. It was his idea to call the mark Eddie Schalaci, my name. He didn’t want to be the only one who had to feel like a filthy child molester.
“We know you got a scrapbook, Eddy, of all your little bullshit scams.”
Collins is an asshole.
I fish in my pocket for Eddy’s pack of cigarettes, from when we took his belongings earlier. I toss the menthols on the table in front of Eddy. His callous fingers pick out a cigarette, and put it in his dry mouth. I light it for him with his lighter. His hands shackled, he raises the pack to me. I take one, and light it myself, then pace over to the mirror.
Eddy breaks his silence.
“I feel like The Unit, you know? When that cocksucker hit that goddamn pitch. Over his head, Ron. Pitch was over his goddamn head.”
I nod, without the heart to tell him my real name, and turn to the mirror. There are the three of us. Eddy looks betrayed, as he always does. I look a bit like me again, Eddy Schalaci. Eddie Schalaci. Undercover works like that. Looking in a mirror. You never know when someone’s behind it, looking back at you.
THEO GANGI is the author of Bang Bang (Kensington Publishing), a hard-boiled New York City-based crime thriller. His stories have appeared in The Greensboro Review and the Columbia University Spectator. His articles and reviews have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Inked magazine, and Mystery Scene magazine. His second novel, Twist the Trees (Kensington), will be released in early 2010. Visit him at www.theogangi.com.
The Plot by Jeffery Deaver
When J. B. Prescott, the hugely popular crime novelist, died, millions of readers around the world were stunned and saddened.
But only one fan thought that there was something more to his death than what was revealed in the press reports.
Rumpled, round, middle-aged Jimmy Malloy was an NYPD detective sergeant. He had three passions other than police work: his family, his boat, and reading. Malloy read anything, but preferred crime novels. He liked the clever plots and the fast-moving stories. That’s what books should be, he felt. He’d been at a party once and people were talking about how long they should give a book before they put it down. Some people had said they’d endure fifty pages, some said a hundred.
Malloy had laughed. “No, no, no. It’s not dental work, like you’re waiting for the anesthetic to kick in. You should enjoy the book from page one.”
Prescott’s books were that way. They entertained you from the git-go. They took you away from your job, they took you away from the problems with your wife or daughter, your mortgage company.
They took you away from everything. And in this life, Malloy reflected, there was a lot to be taken away from.
“What’re you moping around about?” his partner, Ralph DeLeon, asked, walking into the shabby office they shared in the Midtown South Precinct, after half a weekend off. “I’m the only one round here got reason to be upset. Thanks to the Mets yesterday. Oh, wait. You don’t even know who the Mets are, son, do you?”
“Sure, I love basketball,” Malloy joked. But it was a distracted joke.
“So?” DeLeon asked. He was tall, slim, muscular, black-the opposite of Malloy, detail for detail.
“Got one of those feelings.”
“Shit. Last one of those feelings earned us a sit-down with the Dep Com.”
Plate glass and Corvettes are extremely expensive. Especially when owned by people with lawyers.
But Malloy wasn’t paying much attention to their past collars. Or to DeLeon. He once more read the obit that had appeared in the Times a month ago.
J.B. Prescott, 68, author of thirty-two best-selling crime novels, died yesterday while on a hike in a remote section of Vermont, where he had a summer home.
The cause of death was a heart attack.