“What ever we want,” she said with resignation. “We got a burglar, we got a pretend burglar, we got an invited guest, an uninvited guest, a premeditated murder or a spontaneous spat between two nerds arguin’ over who’s cooler, Superman, Batman, or Captain fuckin’ Kirk. Take your pick.”
“You know, this reminds me of some wisdom once passed on to me from my uncle Jim,” Rizzo said.
“Yeah? What’s that?”
He stood and moved to the sink. He ran water over the stub of his cigarette, then dropped it into the trash. Leaning against the small refrigerator and crossing his arms, he smiled at Priscilla as he spoke again.
“It was the day of my Confirmation. I was lined up outside the church wearin’ my new shiny blue suit with a red arm ribbon, me and all the other kids and their sponsors. My uncle Jim, he was my godfather, he christened me, so he served as my sponsor. Well, we’re waitin’ outside, and I’m startin’ to squirm around, gettin’ all nervous. So Uncle Jim asks me, ‘What’s the matter, Joe?’ and I tell him, ‘Well, the nuns said the bishop’s gonna slap us. They said we gotta kneel down at the altar, and then he’s gonna slap us across the face. And I don’t wanna get slapped.’ ”
Priscilla shrugged. “Sounds reasonable to me.”
Rizzo nodded. “I thought so. Anyway, Uncle Jim kneels down right on the sidewalk in his good suit, probably the only one he owned. He puts his hand on my shoulder and gets real serious, looks me right in the eye. ‘Kid,’ he says. ‘Relax. This is just to make your mother happy, that’s all. So just relax. At the end of the day, it’s all just bullshit.’ ”
“What an upliftin’ Christian message of hope,” Priscilla said.
“Wasn’t it, though? But this here Lauria case. It brought old Uncle Jim to mind.”
Priscilla’s brow furrowed. “Why? I don’t get it.”
Rizzo reached for a third Chesterfield. “I dunno, Cil, maybe ’cause that’s what this case looks like. Maybe, at the end a the day, it’s all just bullshit.”
He lit the cigarette, eyeing her through the smoke.
“All just bullshit,” he said again.
AT SEVEN o’clock Tuesday evening, Jennifer Rizzo took a seat next to her husband on the double recliner in the den of their Brooklyn home. She turned and smiled into his dark brown eyes, noting the TV listings in his hand.
“I’m very proud of you, Joe,” she said.
He looked puzzled. “Proud of me?”
“The invitation,” she said. “To Priscilla and Karen for Thanksgiving. You’ve come a long way, baby. You’re maturing nicely.”
“Maturing? I’m eighty friggin’ years old.”
Jennifer shook her head. “Not quite. Let’s not rush things, time is flying by fast enough. But I am proud of you. And impressed with your bravery.”
“Bravery?”
“Yes, Joe, bravery. The girls and I will welcome your guests with open arms. But we will also disavow any and all responsibility for their presence. As far as my mother and your mother are concerned, this will have been your idea and yours alone.” Jennifer paused, smiling again. “It takes a very brave man to face that. Just remember: there’s a difference between bravery and stupidity.”
Rizzo wrinkled his brow. “What?”
Jennifer raised a pointer finger as she replied. “Inviting them was bravery,” she said flatly. “Not checking with me first-that was stupidity.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WEDNESDAY MORNING AT SEVEN-FORTY, Jackson sat at her desk in the Six-Two squad room. She fingered some precinct crime reports, scanning them perfunctorily, initialing them with an absent mind.
Her mother. Priscilla shook her head slightly, frowning at Karen’s continued insistence on a reconnection.
“Can’t reconnect somethin’ never was connected to begin with,” she said softly.
In the chaos that had been her childhood, the one facet of Priscilla’s character and personality that had proven instrumental to her ultimate survival had been her deeply ingrained pragmatism. At an age when most young girls were hanging posters of pop stars and gossiping on the telephone, she had been dealing with her mother’s alcoholism and all its inherent baggage. Priscilla had soon come to a self-preserving conclusion: the act of birthing a child was merely the physical manifestation of the biological rules of nature. In and of itself, it conferred no special powers or privileges, talents or virtues. It was the simple culmination of an earlier physical act, unrelated and even alien to any professed blessings of maternal love.
An actual mother, Priscilla realized, was a woman who loved you unconditionally, stood by you, taught you, nurtured you. A woman who would never abandon or hurt you by virtue of careless acts of indifference and selfish neglect.
By Priscilla’s definition, the reality of her own life was that she never had a mother. Not as a child, not as an adolescent. And certainly not as an adult.
Priscilla sighed heavily. Her partner, she realized, could never come to such a conclusion about her own life. Karen had bestowed the magical, mystical qualities of a child’s love upon the woman who had given her birth. She could never understand the consequences-the torment, the anguish, the agony-Wanda Jackson’s maternal failures had imposed.
An empty coldness spread slowly within Priscilla’s chest, memories straining beneath veils of darkness, struggling to reach her consciousness. She willed them away, forcing them into the abyss of the deepest corner of her soul.
“Fuck it,” she said aloud, bitterly.
“Fuck what?” she heard.
Raising her eyes, she found herself looking into the curious face of Joe Rizzo. He stood at her desk, his approach having gone unnoticed.
“You okay, Cil?” Rizzo asked, concern tugging at his tone. “You look like you just swallowed a rotten clam.”
She shook her head, clearing it. “These freakin’ precinct reports,” she said, indicating the papers before her. “Pain in my ass readin’ all this, signing off on ’em like it makes a rat’s ass bit of difference if I see them or not.”
Rizzo’s face remained impassive, and Priscilla realized he didn’t believe her answer. “Okay,” he said. “What ever you say.”
Later, Priscilla watched as Vince D’Antonio crossed the squad room to Rizzo’s desk and sat down, conferring briefly with her partner.
Rizzo raised his eyes in her direction, meeting her gaze. He gestured across the room, summoning her. Priscilla rose and walked to his desk.
“Pull up a chair,” Rizzo said. “We need to work out some details.”
She slid a chair from the unoccupied desk near Rizzo’s and sat down. “Mornin’, boss,” she said to D’Antonio.
“Good morning,” the lieutenant said. “I just need a few minutes to get this straight. Rizzo tells me you’re going to interview Lauria’s cousin tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Priscilla said. “The M.E. released the body and she’s tied up making funeral arrangements.”
D’Antonio turned to Rizzo. “Refresh my memory: What’s your schedule look like?”
“Later today I’ve gotta be at court for a grand jury thing. Tomorrow we got the cousin, then me and Cil are RDO till we start midnights Sunday into Monday, then midnights all next week. Tough to work a homicide from midnight to eight, Vince. Some people like to sleep those hours.”
D’Antonio considered it. “Look, let’s do this. I’ll reschedule you both for steady days to work the Lauria case. Take RDOs Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. After your interview of the cousin, prepare a laundry list of grunt work you figure needs doing-license plates, phone reviews, and junkie roundup. Somebody needs to check out the relatives of the landlord, see if there’s a potential perp among them. I’ll have the squad handle it all while you’re RDO, then DD-five the results for you by Monday morning. You come in fresh and go to work.”
Rizzo shrugged. “Monday I’ve got to be at the range, Vince. I already postponed it twice and if I don’t requalify, they rubber gun me and stick me on a desk. I can’t work a homicide from a desk.”