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Overview
Detective Victoria has never been shy about robbing heroin addicts. He loves the looks on their faces when he kicks down their doors and finds them with needles hanging out of their arms, their highs gone in an instant. After seventeen years on the force, Victoria has no delusions about being an honest cop. And that makes him a perfect bagman for Tommy Doyle.
Doyle is the New York Police Department’s chief of detectives, the top dog in a very dirty bunch. To young Bobby Porterfield—who’s deeply in love with Doyle’s daughter, Cathy—the old man is a legend. But as Porterfield is drawn deeper into the dark side of the department, he finds that justice is never black and white. And when Doyle’s top men begin to die, Porterfield fears he may be next.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504032346 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | MysteriousPress.com/Open Road |
| Publication date: | 03/22/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 266 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Doyle's Disciples
By Bob Leuci
MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
Copyright © 1984 Bob LeuciAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3234-6
CHAPTER 1
SUMMER 1970, EAST HARLEM, NEW YORK
Victoria stood motionless on the roof landing, legs apart, bent over, his chin resting on hands that cupped the banister. A long neck on a small, skinny head with shallow cheeks. He looked like a vulture perched on a dead and rotting tree. He was thirty-eight years old and looked a worn fifty. At the end of the month he'd have seventeen years in the department.
Seventeen years is a goddamn long time, he thought, most of 'em spent on tenement roof landings, and here he was again.
Inching forward, he glanced down between the banisters to the first floor. It was the middle of the day. Even so, the tenement was dark. The only windows were those on the floor landings. They were filthy, letting in small streams of beige light that stained the walls and dripped to the floor.
An apartment door opened beneath him. He tiptoed to the rear of the landing. It was easy to merge with the darkness up here. He felt a tingle at his groin and pulled at his pants. He could see them. He could see them all, but even if they looked, they couldn't see him.
Georgia Boy was late ... what else was new? Six flights below he saw a hand grab the banister and move up the stairs.
In times past, he would lie in wait on roof landings just like this one, hiding in dark corners, ambushing unsuspecting heroin addicts as they shot up. Moving to the rear of the landing, he made sure the hook in the roof door was secure.
To watch as a junkie tied a belt around his arm, then injected himself with a mixture of heroin and water, was fascinating. Crouched, he'd stare transfixed, leering as the sick scene was played.
A door opened two floors below him. Music and laughter rose from the apartment like escaping gas. He remembered the junkies. They, too, were happy, if only for a moment. The moment it took for the heroin-mixed blood to stream toward their hearts. Junkies always seemed like a band of dreamers. Each would be somewhere north of Venus, scratching his balls and nodding as the white lady sailed through his veins, when, screaming like a banshee, Victoria would kick open the landing door and bring down the curtain. There were times when a hypodermic would be jutting from the back of a hand or stuck in an arm like a dart. He giggled when he remembered their surprised expressions as he swung his nightstick and grabbed their dope.
This afternoon was different. He was hanging out on another landing, to be sure, but today someone knew he was there.
Dropping a cigarette to the floor and crushing it, Detective Victoria thought about his friends. He had, as best he could figure it, none.
There was Georgia Boy, but Georgia Boy was business — not a friend. Forget Georgia Boy. There was his partner, Billy Price, but Price was a shine. A white man couldn't really be friends with a shine. All things considered, though, Price was the ideal partner. Price left him alone, allowing him to do his thing. He in turn left Price alone, which was the way Price wanted it and the way he needed it. Who wanted to be friends with a shine anyway? Nobody but another shine.
A test: like a flash he pulled his gun from the ankle holster and spun toward the roof door. "Bang, bang ... Gotcha, you smelly mother." The door was locked. No one was there. The weight of the gun felt good in his hand. His passport, his guarantee of safety. He was king of the hill. The landing was all his.
Waiting was always the worst. Watching and listening as the assholes went about the business of sharing their lives with one another. Another apartment door opened, more laughter, more music, the sounds of bongos and a guitar. The smell of frying Latin condiments drifted up the stairs toward the roof.
The street door opened and slammed shut. This time a hand he recognized grabbed the banister around the fourth step. Three diamond rings that glittered five floors below told him this hand belonged to Georgia Boy.
From the hallway he heard a shout, then a scream, then again a shout. What the hell was going on? He couldn't see. He moved to get a better look and slid on some sort of goo. Running feet were coming up toward his landing. He reached for his gun. The hammer hung up, caught on his trousers; he tugged at it and cut himself. Bending over to free the gun, he heard a wheezing, gushing sound. When he looked up, four steps below him stood a bare-chested Puerto Rican in sandals and shorts, gasping for air. Around the Puerto Rican's neck was the largest gold medallion he had ever seen. Pointing his gun right at Christ's head, he hissed, "One more step, you pigskin-eating motherfucker, and I'll blow you into ..." The Puerto Rican didn't wait for him to finish. He yelped, did a pirouette, and headed back down the stairs a lot faster than he had come up. He dodged past Georgia Boy, who stood like a statue against the fifth-floor hallway wall.
"Hey, Georgia Boy, what happened down there?" he yelled.
"I don't wanna look," Georgia Boy called back, standing dead still against the wall as if he were part of the molding.
Someone had kicked an anthill. The tenement exploded with people screaming, shouting, and cursing. Victoria hunched up and stepped back, sliding on the goo. Georgia Boy moved away from the wall and fled up the last flight of stairs. Victoria snapped open the door latch and both men moved out onto the roof.
After the darkness of the landing, the bright afternoon sun made him sneeze and rub his eyes. When he was able to see again he looked into a sneering black face. "What the hell are we doing up here?" asked Georgia Boy, a look of revulsion on his face.
The roof was littered with sable-colored dog shit. Off to one side was a pigeon coop built by a blind man. In the center of the roof, four half-burnt and soggy mattresses stood piled up. Green wine bottles in the hundreds lay scattered about. One, full of urine, stood upright against a chimney. The chimney had a television antenna tied to it with rope, its two metal arms twisted to form a heart.
"Georgia Boy, what's happening, my man?" Shines liked loud friendly greetings, he thought. He also wanted Georgia Boy to forget the incident with the Puerto Rican. Besides, even classy shines loved that voodoo hand-slapping bullshit. With a grin that accented his buck teeth, Victoria stuck out his hand, waiting for a slap as if he'd just caught a down-and-out in the end zone. As it was with most things, he was wrong.
"Fuck you, Sal. Don't talk that jitterbug shit to me. Whaddaya think I am, one of those street niggers?" Georgia Boy snapped as he walked to the edge of the roof and looked down. "You're a cop," he yelled, "don't you know this block is dangerous?" Screams echoed through the street. Victoria joined Georgia Boy at the parapet. The Puerto Rican, gold necklace and all, was hightailing it along a sidewalk thick with people. A domino game at the corner scattered as the Puerto Rican skipped past, a black woman with a machete two strides behind and closing. "Cut the mother," Victoria yelled. As if she heard him, the black woman wildly swung the machete, narrowly missing a teenager on a three-hundred-dollar ten-speed, sending him careening through the scattering crowd.
"This is the last time I'm coming into this hole. The place is a sewer," Georgia Boy said, dusting himself off with long manicured fingers. He was beardless. A scar, like a worm just under the skin, ran along his jaw to his upper lip. He was no youngster, though you'd be hard pressed to guess his age. Processed and pulled back, his oiled black hair gave him a striking Indian appearance. His clothes, silk and linen and custom-made, fit perfectly on a lean six-foot frame. On the hottest of days Georgia Boy wore a jacket. A red silk handkerchief was tucked in the breast pocket of his white linen blazer.
Impressed as he was by Georgia Boy's appearance, Victoria was more interested in the package Georgia Boy pulled out of his inside pocket: four thousand dollars in fresh neat fifties and hundreds, Georgia Boy's monthly payment to the Sixth Division vice and gambling squad.
The son of a bitch could go for twice that and not notice, Victoria thought, snapping up the envelope with a smooth, experienced move.
"Do me a favor. Next month pick a place where human beings go," said Georgia Boy, tiptoeing to avoid a mound of human shit that had solidified, exposing a bit of the Daily News at the peak. "Damn, Sal, why do you seem so at home up here?"
"Better be safe than sorry," quipped Victoria, pissed that he felt the need to explain himself to this shine.
"Next time let's be safe and avoid hepatitis," said Georgia Boy with a slight smile, sensing that he had offended Victoria. Keeping his hands in his pockets so as not to touch anything, Georgia Boy moved to the roof door. "By the way," he said, "there's a new captain up at the Twenty-eighth. He busted up three of my spots. Will ya talk to him for me?"
Victoria feigned surprise. "What fuckin' captain busted up your spots?" He knew who the new captain was all right. He also understood that this shine expected more than a bit of concern for the four grand he deposited with him each month. Wanting to make Georgia Boy at least think he got what he paid for, he grunted, "Just tell me his name. I'll have him outta the fuckin' precinct in a day."
Georgia Boy smiled and threw an arm around him. "He just got there. Give the man a week. If he doesn't get the word in a week, then transfer his ass." Georgia Boy's smile faded as screams could again be heard coming from the street.
"It's Aaron Meyer, the Hebe," said Victoria. "He's new up here. I'll have somebody pull his coat. Don't worry; you'll be able to go with those spots in a week."
Georgia Boy opened the roof door and went back into the landing.
"Ya know, I got stoned one night and fucked one of the broads off this block. When I sobered up I washed my prick in Clorox. I suggest you do the same with your feet."
Apparently, whoever used the roof for a toilet had utilized the landing as well, and Victoria had been shuffling around in it. He bent his head slowly, afraid to look. When he glanced up, Georgia Boy was grinning ear to ear.
"I gotta run. Them gangbusters downstairs will be all over me like stink on shit if I'm not careful." Looking back over his shoulder at Victoria's shoes, he moved down the stairs. Halfway down he called back, "I need a fuckin' machine gun to come into this street. Next month a different spot, O.K.?"
Victoria, concerned with the goo on his shoe, kept scraping it along the top step of the landing. It was tough to sound important with shit all over your feet, but he tried. "There ain't been a Jew born that won't bend for a few bucks," he yelled. "I'll take care of this captain for ya. Count on it," he barked at the disappearing figure of Georgia Boy, who was three flights down and fading fast. Honest cops made him sick, especially bosses, he thought, as he kicked open the landing door and moved out onto the roof.
Victoria made for the corner building. As he crossed from one roof to the other, he noticed a supermarket shopping cart. The cart had a wheel missing and stood on edge next to a pile of finished brick. Before going down, he looked over the parapet to the street. To judge from appearances it was midnight, New Year's Eve, in San Juan. He cackled when he thought of the expressions on the faces of the spics below as the cart, neatly stacked with bricks, sailed over the roof, falling silently, swiftly, exploding into the middle of the active domino game seven floors straight down.
Paddy Sheridan loved to listen to country music and gape at black women's asses. "Turkey asses," he called them. Johnny Cash would break into "Ring of Fire," and Paddy would catch a glimpse of a mulatto ass crossing 115th Street and Pleasant Avenue. What better way to spend a hot July afternoon in Harlem?
There was a time when Paddy had other options. A week after the explosion he could easily have been granted a line-of-duty injury pension. Three quarters of his salary tax-free for life. That translated into more take-home pay than he received when he worked. He didn't want it.
As he regained consciousness, when the burning in his cheek, hand, and shoulder was at its worst, the only thought that passed through his mind was: Now I've done it. I've blown the job. A piece of his face blown off, a piece of his hand gone, not to mention a fair-sized chunk of shoulder blown away, and Detective Second Grade Paddy Sheridan's only thought was: Fuck, I don't wanna be an insurance man.
But it all worked out for Paddy. Chief Doyle went to bat for him. He was able to stay on the job, though not in the bomb squad, his first love. He would be Doyle's chauffeur. Not work with wall-to-wall excitement but he was still "on the job," and what the hell, sitting in Harlem looking at asses and listening to Johnny Cash was a lot better than checking dented fenders.
Live and let live, a cliché for most people, was a lifestyle for Paddy. He hated few people and fewer things. He hated poor blacks who threw bricks off rooftops and fucked up his police car. He hated businessmen who thought they could buy him for a chicken. Of course he hated the British. His strong dislike of Sal Victoria was swiftly deteriorating into revulsion. He'd never, not for a minute, understand the Chief's relationship with the greasy son of a bitch. How could this dirt bag rate to be one of Doyle's bagmen? There were at least fifty guys in the unit that would love that assignment. Of the fifty, Paddy would rather be sitting and waiting for anyone — anyone other than this creep.
Pleasant Avenue is as far east as you can go. Fifty yards further is the FDR Drive, then the river. Paddy backed his department car to the curb. He looked north up Pleasant Avenue toward St. Mary's Church. "Our Lady of the Three Kilos," he called it. The church faced out onto a street that supported more drug transactions than the Camino del Rey in Bogotá. All the big-time dago dope dealers contributed heavily to the church and lived in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Paddy tried not to look in the direction of Victoria's car as it pulled to the curb.
If Victoria would just give him the envelope and leave, that would be bearable, but no such luck. It seemed that Victoria always had a need to jabber. Paddy had nothing in common with him; nothing at all. During fifteen years in the department, Paddy had worked with a ton of partners. Some he liked more than others. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to have to work with this numb-nuts every day. If he wasn't so loyal to the Chief, he'd question Doyle's sanity.
"Hey, buddy, how you doing?" Paddy smiled as Victoria slipped into the department car and shut the radio off.
Victoria hated country music, and never failed to let Paddy know it. "How can you stand that shit-kicking crap?" he said, slamming the door. Paddy let that go. The less said, the better.
"Ya know, Paddy, I'm not feeling too great," Victoria moaned.
"I don't blame you. Have you been listening to the radio? You look at the Times today?"
"The New York Times! Who gives a shit what those Jews think, and the radio in my car is busted," Victoria blurted.
"I have a copy of the Times in the back seat. Take it. You might be front page tomorrow." Paddy's smile had faded. He reached into the back seat and handed him the paper. As Victoria scanned the headline, Paddy turned the radio on.
The New York Times announced that it was preparing to run a series of articles on police corruption. They had reliable inside information, they said.
"Inside information? What bullshit is that?" Victoria scowled and threw part of the paper back over the seat. He kept the sports section, glanced at a few pages, then turned to Paddy. "Do you think they might really have something?"
Victoria's question had an anxious edge. Paddy thought he'd play with this jerk a while. "Hey, look, I don't think the Times would announce anything like this unless they had something to go on. So if I were you, I'd dig out my uniform. You just might be dodging trucks on Canal Street in a week." He had a pin under Victoria's nail he could push or pull. Right now he felt like pushing. "Sal, times are changing. There are plenty of people interested in what's going on in the department. If we don't change with the times we could be in a gang of trouble."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Doyle's Disciples by Bob Leuci. Copyright © 1984 Bob Leuci. Excerpted by permission of MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media.
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