I spent the rest of the night and most of the next morning trying to push any thought of Zico Brancati out of my head. I was done with him. For good. I was going to do my best to ignore Gary’s less than savory business deals, and I was going to stay as far away from any mafia ties as possible. If I just kept my head down and did my work, everything would work out fine.
In addition to forgetting Zico existed, I’d also spent a good amount of brain power imagining the many different ways I could present the notebook to Gary. He’d been so certain there was no way to retrieve it. So confident I was completely useless. I was looking forward to proving him wrong.
However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I couldn’t tell him how I’d actually retrieved the notebook. If I told him I went back to the cigar shop to get it, he’d want to know how I convinced them to give it to me, and somehow, I didn’t think he’d believe me if I told him I smiled and said please. And the truth was entirely off limits. If I could help it, I would never speak of those ten minutes for as long as I lived.
So, as I walked through the building towards my and Gary’s shared office, I still had no plan. However, the moment I opened the door and saw Gary sitting stoically at his desk, not even bothering to look up and say hi to me, I simply reached into my purse, pulled out the notebook, and slapped it on his desk as I passed by.
Gary stopped typing and stared at the book, and then stared at me. I met his gaze without flinching, despite the fact this was the longest Gary had ever looked at me.
“Where did you get this?” he asked, pinching the book between his fingers and holding it up in the air. “How did you get this?”
I paused to try and imagine the look on his face if I told him I went back to the cigar shop and got it for him. That I gave a blow job to a mafia member to retrieve it for him. Would it be disgust? Respect? Gratefulness? It was hard to say, but I would never know. Reluctantly, I made up a boring lie.
“Well, I reached between the seats in the patrol car and pulled it out. It was a dangerous maneuver, very risky, but I made it out okay,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
“It was in the car?” he asked, his cheeks turning a slight pink.
Something was unsettling about seeing Gary embarrassed, but still, I enjoyed it. I nodded. “Yes, it was.”
He bobbed his head for a few seconds before tucking the notebook into his coat pocket and zipping the pocket closed. Just as I was sitting down at my desk, Gary mumbled out a quick thank you.
Perhaps it was the reluctance with which he said thank you, or perhaps it was just residual anger from my meeting with Zico the night before, but I swiveled my chair, so I could see around Gary’s computer and look him in the eyes.
“No problem, but how about next time you lose something, you try looking for it before you go hysterical. Do you got me?” I asked, repeating his words from the day before.
Gary’s lips went flat and thin, but he nodded, and that was good enough for me. I straightened up at my desk and tried to get some work done.
We worked in silence for a few hours, just the clacking of our keyboards and the occasional phone call disturbing the quiet, when I decided to take advantage of the slight upper hand I’d gained that morning.
“What exactly is the nature of your business with the Brancatis?” I asked.
Gary was startled by that, surprised by my voice, but quickly recovered and screwed his face up. “What do you mean?”
I sighed. “I mean, why did you have to go talk with them yesterday? Why did you get into a fight with Zico at the front door? I mean exactly what I said: what kind of business are you doing with the Brancatis?”
“My business with the Brancatis is not your business,” Gary said, turning away from me and back to his computer.
I wouldn’t be so easily intimidated. “You would be right except I was your chauffeur while you conducted this business. And I was in the cigar shop with you. You made it my business when you took care of it during work hours, partner.”
“You know Joey is the heir to the Brancati crime family, right?” he asked, his words coming out so quickly I almost didn’t catch them.
“Yes.”
“Well, soon he will be the head of it,” Gary continued. “And I would like to have a good working relationship with him when he does.”
“Why?” I asked as soon as he was finished, my nose scrunched up in confusion.
“Friends close, enemies closer,” he replied as if that was all the answer I needed.
“So, the sergeant approves of all of this?” I asked. “He doesn’t mind that his officers are cozying up to criminals?”
“He approves of his officers doing what needs to be done to keep the streets safe.”
“And being in nice with the Brancatis will keep the streets safe?”
Gary sighed, and I could tell my line of questioning was flustering him. He hadn’t expected me to push back against him. Honestly, I hadn’t expected it myself. If I hadn’t gone into that cigar shop the night before and met with Zico, I probably never would have been willing to question Gary. He was a respected officer, had serious seniority over me, and was rather intimidating when he wanted to be. However, learning about his shady dealings—because I knew they were shady regardless of what Gary said—gave me moral superiority, and I was ready to use it.
“As a matter of fact, it will,” he said.
“I don’t see how that’s possible considering the Brancatis are the ones most often making the streets unsafe,” I retorted, not ready to back down just yet. “I’m sure you know better than anyone the things they’ve done. The people they are suspected of having murdered. They have rackets all over this town. Do you really want to be seen buddying up to them?”
Gary slammed his hands on his desk. “Damn it, Anna. I’ve been working here longer than you’ve had your badge. I think that demands a bit of respect.”
I’d shaken him. He’d been forced to pull out the superiority card, which was no better than an adult telling a kid “because I said so.” It was a flimsy reason to trust someone, but it was all he had. It felt good.
At the same time, though, I was furious. He was lying to me. I’d challenged him, confronted this issue head-on, and he looked me in my face and lied to me. He had to know I suspected the truth. He had to know I suspected him of dirty dealings. And yet, he chose to lie. Did he really think I had enough restraint to not open his notebook and take a peek inside? If Zico hadn’t read it to me, I certainly would have flipped through it myself.
Self-restraint had never been my strong suit. I once ate an entire birthday cake by myself when it wasn’t even my birthday, and I was on a diet at the time. So, of course, I would have seen the contents of his notebook. Lying to me now was pointless, but still, he insisted on withholding the truth.
A few minutes later, Gary stood up and left, mumbling something about taking his lunch break, and slammed the door behind him. I waited a few minutes and then left, though I wasn’t taking my lunch.
Sergeant Hale’s office was on the same floor as ours but on the other side of the building. So, if I ever needed to go see him about anything, I had to walk past countless other offices and receptionists. Basically, everyone knew where you were headed.
“Got some business with the big man, Anna?” Detective Johnson asked me as I passed his open office door.
I backtracked and stuck my head through the door. He had Yankees memorabilia littered across his desk, his bookshelf, and hung on the walls. I’d only spoken to him a few times since I’d started work, but each and every time he’d asked me whether or not I watched baseball. Apparently, he was going to keep asking until my answer changed from “Absolutely not, I’ve never seen a game” to “Absolutely.”
“Just need to chat,” I replied, smiling.
“You watch the game last night?” He pointed a finger at me, his eyebrows raised in anticipation.
“No, I missed it.”
“Oh no,” he said, dropping two disappointed fists on his desks. “It was a good one.”
“I’m sure it was.” I slowly moved away from his office door, letting him know I was not planning to linger.
“We’ll have to go to a game sometime. You and the wife would get along well. She wasn’t a sports fan at all before I met her,” he said, pointing to a picture of him and his wife, both sporting baseball caps and holding up large plastic cups of beer in the stands of what I could only assume was a stadium.
“That would be great,” I said, having no intention of ever taking him up on that offer. Of the little I did know about sporting events, I knew I wouldn’t want to participate. Living in the city was expensive enough with paying for parking at the stadium, a ticket to get in, and half your life savings for bottled water. No thank you. “I’ll talk to you later.”
He looked back at his computer and gave me a lazy wave.
I knocked on Sergeant Hale’s door softly three times, and when no one answered, I knocked a bit harder.
“Come in?” his deep voice said from the other side of the door, his tone rising at the end in a question.
I peeked my head in. “Are you busy?”
He shook his head and leaned away from his desk, reclining in his chair. “Not at all. Come on in.”
I sat in the stiff-backed wooden chair across from him.
“You ought to knock louder,” he said. “I almost didn’t hear you the first time. I thought it was a noise from the street below.”
“I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“And yet here you are.” He laughed. “I’m only joking, Grasso. Just ribbing you. What’s up? What do you need?”
Despite his large size and intimidating deep voice, Hale had a jovial nature. Like a Santa Claus type. Even during my interview process, he had a way of making me feel at ease, his face was kind and open. I couldn’t tell if it was something about his actual face—like the way some people could look perpetually grouchy even when they weren’t—that made him look so happy, or whether it was just his personality shining out of his features. Either way, I’d always felt comfortable around him. Now, though, nervous energy was vibrating through my muscles.
“I just wanted to talk to you about something that has been bothering me,” I said, my heart beginning to beat faster in my chest, my palms growing clammy. Should I be here? Was this wise? Was I being a snitch? Doubts and questions flooded my brain, making it hard to focus.
“Gary’s treating you all right, isn’t he? I don’t need to go knock him around a bit, do I? I know he can be a little gruff, but he’s a great guy. A great guy.” Sergeant Hale twisted one side of his mustache, and I wondered for the millionth time in my life how it was possible for men who were entirely bald to have such magnificent facial hair.
“No, Gary is great. Well, he has been treating me fine, at least.”
“Okay?” Hale eyes drew together in confusion.
“I’m just a little apprehensive about some of his… connections.” I wasn’t sure how to phrase what I wanted to say. I wanted to make the situation clear to Hale without having to directly say, I think Gary is working with the mafia.
“Connections?” Sergeant Hale sat up and folded his hands on his desk. “Can you elaborate?”
“Well,” I said, suddenly feeling like a teenager sitting in the principal’s office, “on our route the other day, he had me stop at a lot of less than reputable places, so he could go inside and talk with people. I didn’t think much of it, but he kept refusing to tell me why he was going inside or what we were doing. Finally, he stopped off at a cigar shop on the East Side, and he met with Joey Brancati.”
At the mention of Joey Brancati, Hale leaned away from me, collapsing back into his chair, and looked down at the floor.
“I didn’t quite catch the nature of the exchange, but they talked for a while, and Gary refused to divulge what their conversation was about,” I continued.
Until I could be sure how Sergeant Hale would react to this news, I opted to keep the contents of Gary’s notebook and my own meeting with Zico Brancati a secret. There was no reason to redirect any suspicion towards myself.
Hale took a deep breath in and released a loud sigh. “Are you sure he wasn’t just checking in on them? Putting on some pressure? Letting them know we have our eye on them?”
I hesitated. “Well…”
“Because,” Hale said, leaning forward again, looking at me from under his thick eyebrows, “I bet he was just putting some pressure on them. Letting them know the law is watching.”
“I’m not sure.” My mouth pulled to one corner, shaking my head. “It didn’t feel like that.”
“Well you are new to the city,” he said. “You probably just misinterpreted it.”
“Sergeant, with all due respect—”
“No, Grasso. With all due respect, I think you misunderstood the nature of the meeting.” His voice was sharp, finite, resolute. This was no longer a question of whether I had misinterpreted the meeting or not, but a command to ensure me that I had.
“Perhaps I did,” I said quietly, unable to look Hale in the eyes.
“Gary Unwin is a great guy. And a great cop. We have to stand up for our own because nobody else will.”
I wondered whether Hale had ever actually met Gary. He was neither a great guy nor a great cop. However, I didn’t think mentioning that would turn the tables in my favor.
“If we start going after our own,” he added, “we’ll collapse from the inside.”
“I wasn’t going after Gary,” I said, suddenly frantic. I was a snitch. The sergeant totally thought I was being a snitch. Could I be fired for that? Life at the new precinct hadn’t exactly been smooth—my encounter with Zico the night before made that clear enough—but I still wasn’t ready to leave. It would be embarrassing to be fired so quickly after starting.
Hale raised his hands to calm and silence me. “I know you weren’t. You made it very clear that you simply misinterpreted things. I’m just talking now,” he said, his warm smile finally returning. “You know how I love to hear my own voice.”
I smiled, but my face felt as if it were made of fine china. As if the slightest movement could crack it into a million pieces.
“Now,” Hale went on, sucking his lower lip into his mouth and then letting it pop out, “if you’d like a new partner I’m sure something could be arranged, but it might send the impression that you’re hard to work with. We like to maintain a comfortable environment here, and I wouldn’t want people getting the wrong idea about you. Because you aren’t hard to work with. Are you?”
I shook my head. “No. No, not at all.”
Sergeant Hale winked at me. “I didn’t think so. Gary has been around here for a long time, and we’ve never had any complaints, so I’m sure you can understand people would raise some eyebrows if you were to lodge a complaint against him within the first month.”
“I understand,” I said, a cold feeling working its way through my chest. I understood what he was saying. You’re the newbie, not Gary. You’re the one who is replaceable, not Gary. You’re the one who needs to toe the line, not Gary.
He turned back to his computer, and I took that as my cue to leave.
“Thanks for your time, Sergeant,” I said.
“Anytime, Grasso. Anytime.”
I shut the door behind me and made the long walk of shame back to my office.