“It’s a joint circle jerk is what it is. How often the feds share with IA in your life?”
“Never.”
“Well, we’re gonna return the favor and for as long as I can get away with it. I’ll keep them in the darkest of Africa before I give them the tip of my dick on this investigation.”
They reached another cross street on the avenue. Kaprowski pointed at a construction crew building a new curb along Hillside Avenue.
“Soon’s they formed the committee, I had these guys show up in fronna my house.”
“Those guys?”
“Chipped curbs,” Kaprowski said. “Last week I come home, I still had chipped curbs in fronna my house. Same chipped curb as when I bought the place two years ago. Next morning the crew across the avenue there was rebuilding it, my curb.”
He stopped to point at a stocky man wearing a red bandana. “I asked the foreman who authorized it, the fat guy there with the bandana, and he says he was given an address and told to fix the curb. I thought nothing of it, figured it was the city did the work, whatever. Then my wife gets a call from some goomba claims he’s a friend of Carmine Correlli, actually says the guy’s name over the phone, tells her he hopes the crew they sent did a good job and if she needed anything else done around the house, he noticed we had a crack in our stoop out front, they’d come and fix that, too. No charge.”
“When was this?”
“Last week.”
“They aren’t wasting time.”
“My wife called me at work, told me about the call she got, I came home and took a sledgehammer to the new curb. It’s still busted. I get a fine from the city I’ll hire my own contractor. Otherwise it stays busted. I been haunting this little prick every chance I get since. Got a guy feeding me his work sites so I can show up, give him the runs.”
“You know the guy IA is looking into runs interference for Eddie Vento, right?”
“Sean Kelly,” Kaprowski said, “the miserable piece of shit. Yeah, I know.”
“There was another one, a detective working drug enforcement, Hastings, but he’s been forced into retirement. Kelly supposedly helped broker that deal, but we don’t know how, which suggests somebody higher up the food chain had to okay it. IA figures Kelly got involved because of the unnecessary attention Hastings was bringing Eddie Vento. Hastings was shaking down card games and bars in the area and apparently got himself punched out in Vento’s bar over in Williamsburg. Irony is, now you showed me how the last guy running the film and doing the collecting turned out, it’s the guy replaced him knocked Hastings out. Johnny Porno they’re calling him.”
“Another street name to be proud of,” Kaprowski said. “Maybe you should bring him down the morgue, show him the guy he’s replacing. He might reconsider the position.”
“You think?”
“He knocked a cop out, how’s he still on the street?”
“Rumor is Vento had a camera installed because Hastings was shaking down his bartenders. Last thing NYPD needs now is a film of one of its own shaking down a mobbed-up bar.”
“Kelly tracking down the fuck film?”
“As of last week, but we haven’t gone out yet. We’re supposed to have something this week. My guess is it’ll be something Vento throws him. Some bullshit arrest can’t hurt anybody, but might look like Kelly is doing his job.”
Kaprowski was staring down the stocky man with the red bandana. “Some load of shit, that film detail,” he said without taking his eyes off the stocky man.
Levin watched and waited to see who blinked first. He smiled when he saw it was the construction worker that turned away from the staring contest.
“It’s a second prohibition for the mob, that movie,” Kaprowski said. “You’d think after Knapp they’d learn something. The spotlight they gave that commission was nothing more than a dog and pony show.”
“Frank Serpico reminded dirty cops to be more careful,” Levin said.
“And NYPD did their little dance and went right back to business as usual, which is why I’m running this thing under the radar for as long as I can get away with it. Sooner or later there’ll be cops doing what Kelly is doing with Eddie Vento and every scumbag like him. Our best chance to make a real dent is to lay low enough they don’t find out in time, they can’t duck when we throw our first punch.”
“That’s pretty ambitious.”
“Look, this thing works, this unit, I hope to start an Organized Crime investigative division someday, something independent from the feds.”
“Now it sounds like a fantasy.”
“Yeah, I know, but otherwise I’m jerking myself off with this unit, and I have better things to do, too.”
“I had my yarmulke I’d run down the synagogue, say a prayer or two.”
Kaprowski turned to Levin. “You’re looking to feel me out you’re wasting your time. I’m Polish, my wife’s Sicilian and my best friend’s a Jew. He’s not cheap and my wife is religious. Very much so.”
“Fair enough. For the record, though, I’m not religious.”
“Me either, although it breaks my mother’s heart I’m not. She’s still over there, Krakow. Swears her hometown cardinal will become pope some day. Imagine, a Polish pope?”
“That’s, like, what, a Jewish president?”
“Close enough,” Kaprowski said.
The two men shook hands.
Chapter 2
Nancy Kirsk-Albano-Ackerman was still recovering from her orgasm when Louis Kirsk emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. Nancy was on her back in the bed. Her legs shook one last time as she felt the color drain from her face.
“You okay?” Louis asked.
Nancy took a few deep breaths and reached for her pack of cigarettes on the night table. She looked at Louis, taking in his tall, lean body before looking up into his sparkling blue eyes. She licked her lips as he tied his long dirty-blonde hair in a ponytail with a rubber band. Duane Allman, she sometimes thought of, because of the way Louis looked with beard stubble.
“Your head looked about to explode it was so red,” he said.
Nancy fished a cigarette from the pack, lit it with her lighter, then sat up and rolled her eyes.
“Un-fucking-believable,” she said. “That was the best, baby. The absolute best.”
Louis winked at his ex-wife. “That’s what they all say,” he said, then watched as her smile disappeared.
The telephone rang. It had been ringing on and off the entire time they were having sex. Louis ignored the phone to glance at his watch. He turned toward the dresser when the towel dropped from his waist. He grabbed his underwear from the dresser, bent at the waist and stepped into them.
Nancy said, “That your girlfriend calling again?” She pulled the sheets up so they covered her knees. “She’s certainly a tenacious little bitch.”
“She’s midwestern is what she is,” Louis said. “Thinks she’s gonna be an actress someday. She read a biography about Marilyn Monroe and thinks it’s easy.”
“She even legal?”
Louis was pulling his pants on. He feigned amusement. “Very funny,” he said. “You talk to your other ex yet?”
“About what?”
Louis hated when Nancy played dumb for the sake of engaging him. It was getting late and he needed to get her out of the apartment. He also needed to know if her ex-husband would be stopping off at her house with all those five-dollar bills again. She had mentioned a few times over the past two months what a pain in the ass it was to have to shop with fives.
“You know about what,” he said as he sat on the bed and pulled his socks on. “That thing he’s doing you told me about.”
Nancy exhaled a small cloud of smoke. “What thing?”
He leaned forward for his boots, but couldn’t reach them and had to get up off the bed. “That fuck movie, the porno, Deep Throat. You said John was doing something with it for somebody in Brooklyn and he was making all those trips to the Island and whatnot. The five-dollar bills he keeps paying you with?”