Still, now each day on the way to the Ninth squad room, he’d be singing the latest song, maybe “Buttermilk Skies” or “Prisoner of Love.” And when he went to visit Sally in the apartment she took with a girlfriend and the girlfriend stepped out, he’d try singing to her like Dick Haymes did with “Till the End of Time,” he was that happy.
Sally had snagged a job as a telephone operator, and though she hated leaving her mother, she was tired of sleeping on the couch and needed time away from a needy parent. Her place was only twelve blocks away, and Mom would be all right with Izzy still at home. To make Sam laugh, she’d put on fake operator voices and tell him far-fetched stories. One night after doing that, he said, “You’re making a hurtin’ turtle out of me, if you don’t marry me.” First time he ever said it.
“Hurtin’ turtle? That don’t even rhyme,” she said, and then she got buried in laughter. It took two more proposals before he got her to say yes.
Sam’s sergeant called him in and told him there was a major hoodlum named Harry Gross putting the bite on dozens of storekeepers and bar owners. “If we don’t stop him, he’ll be mayor before we know it.”
A funny one, and Sam laughed but could see how true it could easily be. The sergeant said he was giving Sam a transfer. “Detective Brian Hirsch over in Investigation needs more men to bust this guy. There are written tests and a probationary period, of course, but then you’re good to go.” He said Sam caught Hirsch’s notice when Hirsch assisted an undercover officer in a numbers bust with two precincts involved, and Sam was one of two cops handling crowd control. Hirsch liked his deportment and, when he checked, his record. Sam didn’t even know who the detective was, but he gave his sergeant his thanks, along with his regrets. And when he left the building, he threw a kiss to the sky.
The weeks went by fast. Sam aced the tests; why wouldn’t he? He bragged to Sally. They talked about a wedding date for fall.
Detective Hirsch leaned in across the cluttered desk that wasn’t even his, wasn’t anybody’s, just a desk with everybody’s junk on it. This man who looked like Sam’s own father, with a hairline that was almost a memory and the rest of it Brilliantined so shiny it was close to blue; hazel eyes that could drill out any lie you ever thought you could get away with; and hands that should’ve belonged to a guy lifting wrestlers two at a time out over the ropes.
“Graft,” Hirsch said. “Too many of our guys got dirty hands. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t pin on this badge so I could have a side job taking cash from criminals. You with me on this?”
An easy yes from Sam.
“There’s a gonif who, shall we say, perpetrates persuasion for Harry Gross.”
Sam nodded and asked, “Knee-capping, rib-pounding, like that?”
“Knuckles, knives, kicks to the jewels,” Hirsch said. “Just like Gross doesn’t do it himself, this guy has gorillas, too. One of these days a client’s gonna get capped, and Gross and his henchmen will be candidates for the electric cure. I’d like to send a message to Gross before he gets any bigger for his britches. This gonif working for Gross; he wears scarves and floppy hats to conceal something that happened to his face. Spotters say you can tell because it’s waxy-like. The nose is not the same size every day. Some days he’s Jimmy Durante, some days he’s Pacific Islands.”
“Wait. A guy with a fake nose?”
“Right. He—”
Sam said it slowly: “Tino Carlo Caruso.”
Detective Hirsch said, “You know him?”
“I might.”
Not Tino, damn it. Not the Tino who got his crotch stuck on the barbed wire in basic because he slid under the wire instead of on his stomach. Was it the war? Was it what happened the day of the sniper? Or had Tino always been on the brink, and Sam just didn’t know it because the two weren’t reared in the immediate vicinity of each other? Cops on the take was one offense. But Tino, from the neighborhood—at least sort of—put an ache in Sam’s gut in a different way; as if Sam were somehow responsible for him, had been responsible for him on a Belgian road one toe-curling winter. That cursed day, Sam had told him to keep a glove clamped on his face until they reached a medic. Had Tino been saved for this?
The only thing impeding Hirsch’s plan now was that Sam knew Caruso. That meant no undercover on this plan.