Jack stared. He doubted that the detective would actually have the stones to run off right now and hook up with his lover. No, the man seemed troubled somehow, like maybe something else was going on, something more stressful than an extramarital affair…“Okay then,” was all he said. “I’ll be here. See you in a few minutes.”
Balfa grabbed his coat from a rack in the corner and left.
Jack looked down at his burglary reports, but he barely saw them. Something was definitely hinky. He had a pretty good bullshit meter, and right now the little needle was smacking against the high end of the red zone.
He stood up and hurried out of the squad room.
BALFA DROVE DOWN SACKETT
Street. Instead of turning north on Clinton, toward downtown, he bore straight. Toward the waterfront.
“What are you up to?” Jack muttered as he followed in his car, two blocks behind. Though a spectacular sunset streaked the sky ahead—the last rays caught the bottom of a field of clouds like cotton wadding catching fire—the winter dusk was settling down fast. The good news was that there was still enough light so that he didn’t have to turn on his headlights.
Traffic in Carroll Gardens was busy, the beginnings of rush hour, but Balfa continued on across the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway into quiet Red Hook. Following him here was going to be a lot harder, as cars were few and far between. Jack watched Balfa turn left onto Van Brunt Street. If he followed, the detective would surely spot the tail. He made a quick decision. From his childhood, he knew these streets well, and he would have to rely on that knowledge now, mixed with a little luck. He cut left on Columbia and picked up speed, hoping to catch up again with Balfa a few blocks down.
The gambit worked. Jack turned onto Summit Street, near the entrance for the Battery Tunnel, pulled over, and waited to see if Balfa would blow on by. And he did, continuing down Van Brunt toward the harbor. Jack gave him another two-block lead, then swung out after.
The detective drove almost all of the way to the water, then turned left on Beard, a street that ran past the old Todd Shipyards. When he was a child, Jack had come here often to watch the workers repair huge ships. The behemoths would be floated into one of two graving docks, which were like massive stone bathtubs, and then a gate would close and the water would be pumped out so that workers could have a rare opportunity to see what was normally hidden below the waterline. Then they could clean, weld, and repaint the rusty, barnacled hulls. With the constant clang of iron and steel and huge showers of sparks from the welding torches, the yards provided a grand free spectacle.
Now the shipyards were gone, and Beard Street was just a lonely, quiet street bounded by empty warehouses, derelict little homes, and vacant lots. A tail would surely be spotted here. Again, Jack cut over a couple of streets early and swung around in an attempt to catch up with Balfa a little farther on. A few blocks down, he hung a right, pulled over, and waited, but the other detective didn’t reappear. Cursing under his breath, Jack got out of his car next to an ivy-choked chain-link fence. He was quickly chilled—he hadn’t had time to pull his coat on, and a brisk wind swept down the deserted Red Hook street. He cautiously poked his head around the end of the fence and glanced down Beard; thank God the dark was settling in. A block back, Balfa had pulled up behind a parked car. He was too far away for Jack to make out what was going on.
He put the collar of his sports jacket up against the cold, and turned back around the other side of the block. He had grown up just four streets away, and childhood games had provided him with a knowledge of every nook and cranny. Stickball. Kick the Can. Ringolevio, where one team had to run and hide…He squeezed between two fences, ran down a little weed-filled path, and made it across the middle of the block. Panting, he paused to regain his breath, and then peeped out between two abandoned houses. (He half-expected someone to grab him and chant “Ringolevio-One-Two-Three!”)
Fifteen yards up the cobbled street, Tommy Balfa stood next to the open window of a black SUV talking to the driver. He turned to scan up and down the empty street, and then reached out as something was passed through the window. A bag or package of some sort—it was hard to make it out in the failing light.
As the other car pulled away into the deepening dusk, Balfa opened the back door of his own car and tucked the object behind his seat.
JACK WAS WAITING FOR
the detective when he returned to the station house. Balfa didn’t spot him when he pulled into an angled parking slot between two squad cars; didn’t notice him until Jack yanked open the passenger-side door and slid into the front seat.
“You should have put it in the trunk,” Jack said.
Balfa looked over, wide-eyed. “What? What are you talking about?”
Jack reached back between the seats.
Balfa grabbed his arm. “Fuck off, Leightner.”
They were right in front of the station house. Cops were trotting up and down the stairs, walking down the sidewalk. What would they do if they saw two detectives tussling in the front seat of a parked car?
“Come on, Tommy,” Jack said calmly. “You can let me see what’s in there, or we can show your boss. It’s up to you.”
A young policewoman saw Balfa and gave a friendly wave. The detective considered his position for a moment, then released his grip on Jack’s arm. He sat back stiffly Jack reached down behind the seat. He pulled out a small, heavy gray plastic bag. Keeping one eye on the other detective, he opened it and glanced down. Stacks of money, wrapped with rubber bands. Big denominations.
“Usually,” he said, “we give the informants the money. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it happening the other way around. Why don’t you tell me what the hell you’re mixed up with here?”
Balfa sank forward until his forehead rested against the wheel. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“I’
LL GIVE THE MONEY
back,” Balfa said. “I’ll turn these guys in.” He was leaning forward, desperate, hands reaching out across the table.
The two detectives sat at the far back table of Ferdinando’s Foccaceria, an old tin-ceilinged neighborhood restaurant just a couple of blocks away, at the edge of Carroll Gardens. In the early evening, before the dinner rush, the place was almost empty. Old photos of Naples hung on the walls, forlorn men standing next to fruit and vegetable stands, looking out from the beginning of the last century.
Jack crossed his arms, skeptical. “You’ll turn
what
guys in?”
Balfa looked pale. “I’d rather not get into that right now.”
Jack frowned. “Come on, man—I told you I’d hear you out, but I’m not in the mood for any more bullshit.”
Balfa picked up his napkin and twisted it anxiously. “It’s nothing really bad. I swear to you. No drugs, no violence, nothing like that. I’m just in kind of a
situation
. I’m gonna work it out.” He leaned forward, face contorted. “I’m asking you for a break here, Jack, and I know that’s a shitty position to put you in. But the money’s not for me.”
Jack scoffed. “Who’s it for, then?”
The other detective seemed to crumple before his eyes. “I know you don’t like me.” Jack started to say something, but Balfa held up a hand. “You probably won’t believe this, but normally I’m a good cop like you—everything by the book.” He looked up. “Are you married?”
Jack just stared at him. “The money, Balfa. Who in the hell is it for?”
The other detective looked down at the table. “My wife and I, we used to have it really good. But now we’ve got a big problem.”
Jack gave him a skeptical look. “What kind of problem?” He was thinking of the redhead he had seen dropping Balfa off near the station house, but the detective looked stricken, and when he spoke, his voice was raw.
“It’s my daughter, Tiffany. She’s nine. Three years ago she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. It’s a form of cancer. We got her some excellent treatment and it went into remission, but now it’s back. Stage Four. The doctors have given her chemo, radiation, the works. They say there’s nothing else they can do.”
Jack stared at him. He wanted to ask why, if the man’s own daughter had cancer, he couldn’t have cared more about the boy who had drifted ashore in Red Hook, but now didn’t seem to be a good time to press the point.
Balfa looked up at him, eyes filled with pain. “My daughter knows, that’s the thing, she
knows
. And she’s so fucking quiet about it. She sees that this is making things difficult between me and my wife, and so she just stays quiet. You wanna talk about hell on earth? You put yourself in my shoes, Jack. You try to look your own child in the face.”
Jack frowned. “You’ve got health insurance from the job, obviously. What do you need the money for?”
Balfa sighed. “My wife and I heard about a new treatment. In Europe. Over here the FDA hasn’t approved it yet, so the insurance bastards won’t pay for it. We need to get her over there, give her this chance. I don’t have squat for savings. I had no other way to do this, Jack, I swear to you.”
Jack stared at the detective. He seemed so sincere, yet he had already lied a number of times. “You trying to jam me up, Tommy?”
“How do you mean?”
“Stand up,” Jack said.
“What?”
“
Stand up
. I want you to go back to the bathroom. Leave the door unlocked. I’m gonna meet you there in thirty seconds.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Do it.”
Balfa looked confused, but he got up.
Jack sat for a moment. Then he got up and crossed over to the bathroom.
“Take off your jacket,” he ordered.
“What?” Balfa said.
“Take off your jacket. This has IAB written all over it.”
After a number of notorious scandals, the Serpico thing and a number of others, the NYPD had tightened ship. Of its 55,000 employees, 650 worked for the Internal Affairs Bureau. Every year, they conducted a thousand integrity tests. It could be a fake 911 call where you showed up and there were some drugs left out in the open, or a traffic incident where somebody would offer a bribe, or a more elaborate setup. They might rent out an apartment, say it belonged to some drug dealer, plant some cash, call you in with a fake tip, and watch you on hidden monitors. They conducted the tests in every precinct, and the subjects were selected at random. Highly decorated veteran cops were not exempt.
Balfa shook his head. “You’ve got it all wrong.” He took off the jacket.
Jack patted him down.
No wire.
They returned to their table. Over by the espresso machine the waitress, a middle-aged woman with heavy orthopedic shoes and a seen-it-all face, was giving them a wry look.
Jack sat and stared at the other detective for a while. Balfa looked like he was about to collapse with anxiety.
Jack sighed. Ran a hand over his face. Sighed again.
“I made a mistake,” Balfa said. “But I’m gonna straighten it out. I’m gonna fly right. Tell you what: You can even hold on to the money.”
“No way,” Jack said. That was the last thing he needed, to get directly implicated like that. “Who are these guys?” he asked. “What did you do for them?” Before Balfa could answer, he held up a hand. “Never mind. Don’t tell me right now.” Maybe it was best that he didn’t know. For legal reasons, in case he ever got questioned under oath…
Balfa looked like he was about to cry. “Jack? What are you gonna do? Will you at least think about this a little? Don’t even consider me; I’m just asking you to think about what’ll become of my daughter…Just take a day or two to think about it. Will you do that for me?”
Jack scowled. “I don’t need this. I don’t need this at all.” He looked away. “I’ll think about it. I can tell you right now that I’m not gonna just let this slide, but maybe there’s some way we can still get you out of this mess. It doesn’t look very likely, but we’ll see.”
His beeper went off. He glanced down and read the message. It was Sergeant Tanney, probably wondering why he hadn’t checked in. He stood up. “I have to go. I need to think about this.” He pulled out a couple of dollar bills for the coffee. “Sit tight,” he told Tommy Balfa. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
J
ACK LOOKED UP. MICHELLE
had just said something to him, but he had no idea what it was.
“I’m sorry?” he said.
She gestured down at the dinner table, at the dinner she had prepared for them, chicken and a salad and wine. “I said, ‘Is something wrong with the food?’ ”
“Of course not,” he said. “It’s delicious.” As if to demonstrate, he cut off a piece of chicken breast, dabbed it into the gravy, and popped it into his mouth. And then he was drifting away again. Was it Internal Affairs, he wondered? It didn’t make sense. The setup, if it was a setup, was just too unclear, too muddy for a random test; they couldn’t have known that he would follow Balfa. Something was definitely wrong, though. The detective had lied before, about where he was going, about his “informant.” This new tale about the sick daughter—Jack supposed it was within the realm of possibility, but it could easily be more of the same, bullshit piled on top of bullshit. He frowned at the notion: Would the guy actually have the gall to make up a fatal illness for his own daughter?
“Jack?”
He looked up. Michelle was staring at him again.
“Is something wrong?”
“No,” he said. “It’s a work thing.”
“What happened?”
He started cutting the rest of his chicken into small, neat pieces. It was one thing to joke about some case that was all wrapped up, turn it into a dinnertime story, but this was too personal, too fucked-up. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just a problem I’m having with a detective in Carroll Gardens. It’s fine,” he added, though it was anything but.
He considered his options. He could sit tight, mind his own business, hope that IAB was not looking his way, but there was no way he was gonna do that. If he was gonna turn a blind eye to bad business, why bother being a cop in the first place?
He could take it to Balfa’s boss, spell out everything he had seen, let the chips fall where they might. Maybe, like Sergeant Tanney had said, there were just two kinds of problems in the world: my problems, and
not my problems
. Maybe he should just set this in someone else’s lap, let them deal with it. That didn’t feel like much of an option, either. Right out of the Academy, every rookie learned that the crime-fighter’s code coexisted with a fundamental law: The Blue Wall. You stood up for your brothers. You didn’t rat anybody out. File under Life’s Little Ironies: It was the same way that criminals looked at things.