Chapter 3

I propped my head up on the pillow and studied Red’s sleeping face from a distance of about three feet. She didn’t look truly young and beautiful with her eyelids closed but she was relaxed and resting and in my bed.

That was enough for me.

I would be the first one to admit that I didn’t hold with all this younger generation looseness about cheating and shacking up with anyone for a one-night stand. I knew my mom was certainly not a nun or a Saint after we lost my dad but I figured she had her right to choose what she wanted to do from those other married couples that resented the fact she was basically footloose and fancy-free other than raising me and my older sister Serena.

My mom might have had her share of male friends with benefits but she deserved some fun in life and had a right to chase away the loneliness whenever she had an opportunity.

Serena was another story.

She went to an all girl’s college right there in the city and was the one that got to go to dances and study acting and ballet. That never bothered me at all because I was in the boy scouts right up until I went over to Korea with the first wave of fresh blood from the Fourteenth Street armory right in my senior year of high school.

My summer of basic training at Fort Dix over the George Washington Bridge in New Jersey was easy for me because I already had like seven years in the boy scouts and had learned how to shoot and use a knife and an entrenching tool and pitch a tent so it was all second nature to me just switching the color of my uniform. Almost everything I got issued that first week was World War Two surplus and I think the Army even went out to raid the Army Navy stores to stock up the stuff they had given away just a few years ago thinking they would not need it again so quickly.

My sister dated my drill sergeant for a couple of years and I had to listen to him mooning about how beautiful she was and that she made him feel so good inside. It was so bad it almost made me run to the latrine and throw up it was that sickening.

My years over in Korea were broken up by a stint in the hospital in Japan getting over the effects of a mortar round that filled my ass with shrapnel and had me sleeping on my stomach for almost an entire month. I thought they would send me home after that, but they were really short of men after the Chinese came across the Yalu River with like a million men with orders to kill all the round eyes they could corner and terminate with extreme prejudice.

That was all in the past now. My mom used to say, “Just think of it as water under the bridge that you can’t bring back.”

Fortunately for me, My Uncle Joe, my one and only real blood Uncle helped me to get my resume fixed up for the NYPD and I graduated right near the top of my training class and set out on the dirty streets of Spanish Harlem to right the wrongs of the world in my shiny new blue uniform.

In a way, I guess I was lucky because it was a time when a cop was still due a lot of respect for being a buffer against the reality of the seamier side of New York City. The new police commissioner was a stickler for response times and we were all focused on cutting the times to the bare minimum and I can tell you it wasn’t easy what with the traffic and other obstacles that kept popping up to slow us down.

I got promoted twice in two years on the force when I got the call to answer a reported domestic disturbance. My partner was a Puerto Rican ex-lawyer with aspirations of joining the FBI thinking his NYPD credentials would look good on his resume for the Federal job in Washington, D.C. I thought he was a little bit crazy because who the fuck would want to leave a great city like the Big Apple and go down to that shithole that wasn’t even in a real State.

As usual, he laid back and let me take the lead because I was a real hard-charger in those days. Most of the calls we got were for assaults and break-ins with a real serious call now and then for rape or murder to keep you on your toes. Our district was not much a domestic disturbance beehive and most people generally minded their own business and let the families work it out on their own without involving the cops to make things official.

Right off the bat, I didn’t like the door to the apartment because it was one of those metal jacket jobs with the reinforced frame that precluded any thoughts about kicking it in or using a heavy shoulder to force open. I was stupid enough to go through the doorway after the prick inside unlocked it and stepped back into the darkened interior.

The first shot caught me in my left knee.

I was lucky because it hit more flesh than bone and it was the second shot that did most of the damage shattering my other leg just below the knee bringing me down to the dirty carpet with no chance to line up any return fire at all.