Superbia (Book One of the Superbia Series) (11 page)

“That is
bullshit!” Vic shouted.
 
“Get your hands
off of the kids and get out.”

“If you’d rather
drink than watch them, I don’t want them around you,” she said.

“I never said
that!
 
I never said I didn’t want them
and I never said I’d rather drink.”
 
He
pointed at the door and said, “Go.
 
Leave.
 
Now.
 
Go do whatever you planned on doing tonight,
and leave us alone.
 
They will be
fine.
 
We’re going to rent a movie, eat
some pizza and play a board game.”
 
He
looked at his daughter and said, “Does that sound fun?”

Penelope smiled
and nodded.
 
“I want to stay,” she said.

Danni spun on him
and stuck a finger in his face, “Don’t curse around my children.
 
I won’t have it.”
 

“Okay,” he
said.
 
“Now would you please just get
out?”

“The only reason
I’m not taking them is because I already have plans,” she said.

“Better hurry up
then.
 
Don’t want to keep the lucky guy
waiting.”

Danni hugged the
kids and kissed them while Vic stood by the open door, holding it for her,
waiting for her to leave.
 
After she
walked out, he shut it quickly and locked it.
 
Both kids were sitting on the couch looking up at him silently.
 
Vic forced a smile and said, “Who wants
pizza?”

8.
 
The clerk looked up at the older man standing
outside the small window and said, “Can I help you sir?”

He tapped the
glass and said, “Is this bulletproof?”
 
He frowned at the wall surrounding the window and said, “The wall around
it isn’t.
 
What good is that?
 
Somebody could just start shooting you
through the wall.
 
Makes no goddamn
sense.”

The clerk put her
finger on the red emergency button and said, “What can I do for you, sir?”

“I’m here to see
your new detective, Frank O’Ryan.”

“And your name
is?”

He smiled at her.
 
“Frank O’Ryan.”

***

“Look, let’s just
humor him for a few minutes, then make like we got a radio call or something.”

“What are you
talking about?” Vic said.
 
He put the car
in park and looked around the shopping center.
 
“Where’s he at, inside?”

“I’m serious, Vic.
 
It’s always one thing after another with
him.
 
I don’t have time for it anymore.”

“He’s your dad,” Vic
said.
 
“Show some respect, you ungrateful
goddamn heathen.
 
How many years did he
have on the job?”

Frank shrugged,
“Thirty something.”

Vic whistled and
shut his door.
 
“Back then it was for
real.
 
They didn’t take any shit off
people.
 
It was strictly hats and bats,
you know what I mean?”

“No, not really,”
Frank said.
 
“Listen, my dad spent his whole
career pushing a black and white around.
 
He never made sergeant, never went anywhere.
 
He worked every holiday, every family
gathering, every graduation.
 
It’s
nothing to brag about.”

“He put food on
the table for you though,” Vic said.

“It was more like
beer in the fridge,” Frank said.
 

Vic stared at him
as they crossed the parking lot.
 
“Did
you play lacrosse in school?”

“What the hell
kind of question is that?”

“It’s an inquiry
about your former recreational sports activities.
 
So did you?
 
I bet you did.
 
Out there
frolicking with all your preppy friends running around with your baskets,
playing catch.”

“Lacrosse is an
incredibly rough sport, Vic.
 
It takes
more strength than baseball and is more dangerous than football.”

Vic nodded and
said, “That must be why they let chicks play it.”

Bells rang on the
glass of the pizza shop door as they opened it.
 
The old man was waiting at a table for them with three drinks on the
table.
 
Frank looked at the straws inside
the cups and said, “Dad, I told you not to put the straws in the cups for
people.
 
It’s not sanitary.”
 
He yanked the straws out and winged them into
the trashcan.
 
He grabbed two new ones
and tossed one at Vic.
 
“Some people like
their straws to not taste like your grubby fingers before they drink out of
them.”

Mr. O’Ryan looked
down at his cup and Vic leaned forward, “Was he always this big of a pussy?”

Frank held up his
hands and said, “Hey!
 
Not cool,
man.
 
Not cool.”

The old man
chuckled, “Nah, he was always a good kid.
 
Popular with the ladies.
 
Captain
of his lacrosse team.”

Vic spun to look
at Frank, their faces just an inch away.
 
“I knew it.”

“Shut up.
 
Listen, dad,” Frank said, “We can’t
stay.
 
We’ve got to run down to the city
to meet up with the FBI about a drug case.”

“Oh,” Mr. O’Ryan
said.
 
“That’s too bad.
 
I was looking to hear how you were making out
as a dick.”

“Detective,”
Frank said.

“Sorry.
 
We called them dicks.”
 
He looked at Vic and said, “And they lived up
to the name, too, I’ll tell you.”

Vic said, “Screw
the FBI.
 
They can wait.”

“You know what
FBI stands for?” Mr. O’Ryan said.
 
“Famous
But Ineffective.”

Vic smiled and
nodded to Frank, “That’s what I’m talking about.
 
Old School.
 
I love this guy.”
 
He held up his
hand and called out to the man behind the counter to make them a large
pie.
 
“So tell me about what it was like
when you first came on.”
 

“My very first
week on the job, we get a body dumped in the crick down by the old Watson
factory.
 
There’s three feet of water and
this girl is stuck in the reeds and wrapped up in a tarp.
 
So’s I get there and see my Chief standing
there with these two guys in real fancy suits.
 
They had the hats, the trench coats, the whole nine.
 
My Chief says to me, ‘Detective So-and-so
needs to go take a look at the body.
 
Carry him acrost.’”

“Wait?
 
On your back?”

Mr. O’Ryan
nodded, “That’s right.
 
I bent down and
carried the first detective over, then I took him back and had to carry the
next one.”

“No way,” Vic
said.

“Hand to God.”

“I’d have dumped
their asses in the creek halfway across.”

Mr. O’Ryan
shrugged and said, “That ain’t how it was back then.
 
We didn’t have none of the union protection you
guys get now or nothing like that.
 
The
Chief said to do it, and that was it.”

“Unbelievable,” Vic
said.
 

“It wasn’t so
bad.
 
I liked it better than driving a
milk truck, that’s for sure.
 
I was just
a city kid.
 
Getting a cop job in the
burbs was a good gig.”

“How come you
didn’t work in the city?”

Mr. O’Ryan
shrugged and said, “Wrong color.
 
Back
then the mayor was making a push to put all the darkies in uniform.”

“Dad!” Frank
said, looking around.
 

“Sorry, sorry,”
Mr. O’Ryan said.
 
“I meant the, you know,
blacks or colored people, or whatever they call themselves now.”
 

“I bet you saw
some crazy stuff.
 
Back then you guys
didn’t have all these cellphone cameras and internet garbage to worry
about.
 
It was just good old fashioned
police work.”

“Yeah, that’s how
it was,” Mr. O’Ryan said.
 
“I was always
good at telling when someone was lying to me.
 
Frankie can tell you, I was hard to beat when he was growing up.”
  

“Nobody beat the
Truth Rabbit,” Frank said.

Both Vic and
Frank’s father locked eyes without speaking or moving.
 
Finally, Mr. O’Ryan said, “That was just a
goofy thing I used to say.”

Frank was busy
watching the television mounted to the wall above them.
 
“You sure that’s all?” Vic said to the old
man.
 

A pause.
 
“Yeah, just me being stupid.”

The food
arrived.
 
A steaming pizza on a large
silver tray that forced the men to lean back from the table as the waiter set
it down.
 
“This looks good,” Frank
said.
 

Mr. O’Ryan took a
slice and folded it in two on his plate, watching it so carefully that he never
once lifted his eyes to meet Vic’s stare.
 
“So tell me what you boys are working on.”
 

Frank was busily
gobbling up his first slice and trying to catch the grease leaking onto his
chin with a napkin.
 
He spoke, but it was
with a mouthful of food.
 
Vic said
nothing.
 

***

“Your old man has
some great stories, Frank.”

Frank shrugged,
trying to dig a piece of pepperoni out of his back molars with his finger.
 
He peeled his lips back in the visor’s mirror
and said, “When you hear them a hundred times, they get kind of old.”

Vic checked to
see that the highway was clear, eyes shifting repeatedly from the road to
Frank’s face as he steered.
 
“Hey, what
was he saying about that one thing?
 
The
rabbit?”

“I dunno.
 
You mean that rabid possum he shot?”

“No,” Vic
said.
 
Frank was now using his car keys
to scrape between his molars.
 
Completely
oblivious.
 
“The Honesty Rabbit or
something?”

“The Truth
Rabbit.
 
That didn’t have anything to do
with being a cop.
 
It was what he called
himself whenever he thought I was lying to him.
 
He always said ‘Nobody lies to the Truth Rabbit and gets away with it.
 
Son of a bitch, I got it,” Frank said,
inspecting the string of meat between his fingers.
 
“He was good at it too.
 
That or I can’t lie for shit.”

Vic stayed quiet
as he navigated the interstate, the large, towering skyscrapers of Center City
looming closer.
 
They drove past a State
Trooper conducting a car stop.
 
He was
talking to the driver of a vehicle with his head down, the brim of his circular
Smokey the Bear campaign hat nearly as wide as his shoulders.
 
“PSP, the
finest
law enforcement agency in the Commonwealth. Just ask them, they’ll tell you,” Vic
muttered.
 

“Big heads, little
hats,” Frank said.
 
The trooper looked up
at them as they passed and Frank held up his middle finger through the window.
 

“Do you know why
God invented the NYPD?”

“No, why?”

“So that New
Jersey State Troopers could have heroes,” Vic said.
 

Both men laughed,
and then Frank said, “Do you know why God invented our police department, Vic?”

“No,” Vic
said.
 

“You really don’t
know?”

“No, I really
don’t know.
 
Tell me.”

Frank turned to
look back out of the window at the skyscrapers and bridges passing by.
 
“Me either.”
 

***

They parked on
the street outside of a shipyard as tractor trailers pulled up to the front
gate only to be glared at by stern-faced port authority police officers.
 
The stink of Diesel fuel filled the air.
 
Vic pointed at a dilapidated brick building
near the gate and said, “Come on.
 
You
got your badge?”
 
Frank showed him his
silver Patrolman badge and Vic frowned.
 
“Where’s your gold shield?”

“I don’t have a gold
shield.
 
I’m not even a not-even-promoted
detective yet.”

“Maybe someday,
rookie.
 
Maybe someday.”

Frank followed
him toward a steel door with no handle.
 
A tractor trailer rumbled past them, laying on the air brakes as it
approached the gate.
 
Vic banged the door
with his fist and had his badge ready when the door opened.
 
A large city cop wearing a t-shirt and blue
jeans answered the door.
 
He squinted at
both badges and said, “How y’all feeling?”

“All right,” Vic
said.
 
He looked into the dark warehouse
behind the officer and frowned, “Dez around?”

“He in the back
with the rest of those clowns.
 
Come on
in.”