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Overview
Nick Manaris is a promising detective, but he’s lost his love for the job. After years wading through the worst the city has to offer, life as a cop has begun to feel like torture. Assigned to work with slick detective Sonny McCabe and his gang of cowboys, Nick knows he’s gotten in over his head. Sonny believes a gang of Cubans has come to an agreement with the Mafia, trading guns for drugs, and he wants to nip their alliance in the bud. He convinces Nick to get them a warrant for a raid, and the result is tragic.
The information given by Sonny’s snitch is wrong, and the raid turns into a bloody mess. With two cops and a host of suspects dead, Nick and his fellow officers are marked for revenge—and their lives are about to get a whole lot worse.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504032353 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | MysteriousPress.com/Open Road |
| Publication date: | 03/22/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 350 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Snitch
By Bob Leuci
MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
Copyright © 1997 Robert LeuciAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3235-3
CHAPTER 1
Nick Manaris was pouring coffee when the pack of them came into the office. He turned away, seeing the afternoon and night, and the couple days ahead turn to madhouse time, no time to relax, all the peacefulness of his life gone. Thoughts of the upcoming thirty-six, forty-eight hours froze his heart, but it had already been a bad day, hard on his chest all around, starting with watching Renata pack last night, with her standing in the bedroom putting her Victoria's Secrets in the suitcase, staring at him, a chunk of polar ice, trying to tell him something about her college reunion, her talking a whole lot without saying much, then on to this morning driving her to that damn nut factory, JFK Airport, with traffic backed up for fucking miles, waiting for two hours until her plane took off. Then Captain Hawks this afternoon telling him the hit could go down real soon and that he was needed and he'd have to hang loose, and now the crew coming in carrying on at decibels for the deaf, yakking and laughing, making fools of themselves, Sonny McCabe looking at Nick like what are you doing standing over there by yourself?
Nick turned away, thinking, Of all the teams I could have hooked up with. Wanting to throw on his jacket and bug out of there, feeling like he was lost, his compass gone, his chest tightening like it was wrapped in baling wire. "C'mon! C'mon!" Sonny called out. "Will you move your ass."
"I'm coming, calm down. What's the hurry?" At that moment Nick Manaris's discomfort knew no bounds.
Nick would be thirty-six in the fall, a first-grade detective assigned to the Organized Crime Control Unit. He was number two on the sergeant's list and about as ready for the next lieutenant's test as anyone could be. A man on the rise in a job he no longer loved — a job, if the truth be known, he was beginning to hate. On this day he felt as resigned to his private unhappiness as he was to the city's never-ending cycle of violence and evil and corruption. He'd had it all right, up to here.
Coming up, when Nick had determined the path of his life, he considered the fact that there was nothing worse than to live in an unbroken cycle where yesterday and tomorrow are identical to today. The prison of it. No more to learn than what you already know. To know that next year will be no different than this and tomorrow a reflection of today was a kind of tormented life that he wanted no part of. Police work offered something else, a whole lot else. Next year he would have ten years in the job. He had ten more to do and the second ten, they say, go like a shot. Remembering this, he felt a little better. Imagining himself years down the road. He saw himself at the helm of a charter fishing boat, sailing the Atlantic, fishing for shark, tuna, and marlin. Living a life quiet and alone, with a salty cottage on a bay that opened to the ocean.
Right now, though, there was this off-the-wall group he was teamed with. Big-time arrest guys, to be sure, but wackos nonetheless. A proud, sacrificing, hardworking group, but as close as you can get to outlaws themselves.
"Yo, Nick," Carl Suarez called out, "get on the stick, willya? We're having a meeting here."
Sonny McCabe and the rest of the team, there were three of them, walked through the office, strutted past the field detectives' cubicles into the captain's conference room, Nick following them. Captain Hawks stood at the conference room door, gesturing for him to hurry, nervously throwing him a high five.
Nick entered the conference room, hoping the hit that McCabe and his team were planning would fall through. He wasn't up for breaking down doors, rolling around with a bunch of bad guys.
Nick's earliest sense of himself was as a separated figure: there in the front was the world, off on the horizon as far off as you can get was he. Of average height and muscular, Nick was about twelve when his father started working him out with push-ups and sit-ups and banging the heavy bag. The habit stayed, grew to pure enjoyment. His round open face was not bad looking, even with his flat broken nose that ran a little in the cold. He had a different look that seemed to combine strength, concern, and more than a bit of slyness. Nick Manaris could not be intimidated. He was as smart as anyone, brighter than most, the son of an ex–pro fighter, and a guy who had six professional fights of his own to boot. People were not lining up to take him on head to head.
Captain Hawks sat at the head of the table, chin up, arms folded across his chest, intense, a case jacket lying open in front of him. Nick felt a sharp twinge of anxiety, this Hawks was a hummer. A flushed, middle-aged, silver-haired, slippery piece of work, he oozed trouble. The captain drove a late-model Thunderbird, wore expensive suits, and talked out of the side of his mouth like a hoodlum. The day Nick met the captain he pinned the guy bad news. He glanced at Hawks again, sighed, and asked himself, what gives you the right to judge?
Nick flashed on the first day he was assigned to the office. He'd left after a two-hour interview with Hawks, the sickening intuition that the man was a money guy, no two ways about it, eating at him. Ten years in the department, he could nail the breed in a heartbeat. A beguiling charm, and the moral convictions of a hit man. Nick couldn't figure it. Since he'd been on the job people dropped out of the sky just to make him nuts. Maybe it's me, he thought, maybe I just don't get the message, whatever the goddamn message is.
No one on the team acknowledged Nick when he came in. They sat silently, apparently lost in concentration, listening to Sonny McCabe, who was at that moment doing his song and dance. Nick studied McCabe for a second. Then he put his elbow on the table and rested his cheek in the palm of his hand. He watched Sonny McCabe talk, listening but not hearing the team's other first-grade detective bullshit. McCabe talked about this case of his like it was the French Connection, when it seemed to Nick that what McCabe really had was a bunch of half-assed Cubans and South Americans trying to connect with a crew of Mafia wanna-bes out of Brooklyn. That's all McCabe had, nothing more than that.
After a minute or two, Nick figured that maybe there was a chance in a hundred he might be wrong, maybe this team did have something here. He leaned back in his chair, convince-me style. Either way he had a bad feeling about this case, this crew, he felt like a missionary in the Amazon forest.
McCabe had their attention, everyone in the room listening as the king of bullshit bullshat. McCabe went to the blackboard and drew a flow chart, Cubans and Colombians on one side, Italians on the other, the guy doing a good job of thinking and talking on his feet. Captain Hawks saying the DA, Assistant DA Robinson was doing cartwheels over this one, expecting big things here.
Nick watched McCabe thinking, thinking, finally saying, "What does the snitch say?"
Eddie Moran, a second-grade detective and McCabe's steady partner, sat opposite Nick, rolling a cup of coffee between his palms. He said slow and easy, "Sonny's going to run him down later today."
Moran was a big balding man into wearing ten-gallon hats and cowboy boots made of some reptile's skin, jeans, a belt with a huge polished silver buckle. Moran had never been further west than Pennsylvania and looked about as country as Johnny Cash.
"The last thing the snitch told me," Sonny said, "was that the guns are on their way. Should arrive in the city tonight, tomorrow at the latest."
Captain Hawks got up from the table, went to the coffee machine and poured himself a cup, sat back down, drank half the coffee, and said, "I wanted you on this case, Nick, because, well, you know. Nothing personal, you're a good investigator and all — I mean Christ, you're a first-grader, you should be — nothing personal, but I wanted you here because of your relationship with Robinson. You and the DA been buddies for years, right? Now that's no insult, my friend, that's the truth."
Nick flipped his pen onto his pad.
Andre Robinson, Nick's Fordham law professor, was now an assistant district attorney in Queens County. Andre was deep into politics, on his way to becoming DA and one of Nick's few close friends. The man had a ton of drag with the department, connections that lined up to do him favors, all of them figuring that the dapper, handsome, black, slick piece of work could one day be mayor.
"We need you to help nail down a few warrants," Sonny said.
The captain's comment was pretty honest and Nick was not one to downplay honesty, since there was so little of it in the department these days. Nick nodded to himself, feeling vaguely humiliated.
"Andre Robinson," he said, "is a good guy. He's not going to put up with any crap. Either we have something here or we don't. It seems to me that we got plenty. So what's the problem?"
Everyone was watching him, heads bobbing in courteous confirmation. Before him sat Captain Hawks, McCabe stood at the blackboard, his partner Moran and the translators, Monserette and Suarez, sat directly across from Nick. An eager group, and in his mind Nick decided to call them Jesse James and his Four Desperados.
Hawks had put this team together at the request of McCabe and the members had all been handpicked by the first-grader. Why they had tapped him to work this case Nick had not been able to figure. At least not until this moment. His friendship with the DA, that was it. Hawks trying to maneuver him into a position to ask Andre for a favor. Quintessential slick cop bullshit and totally predictable.
Captain Hawks, McCabe, and the others sitting around the table gave Nick a case of the chokes.
"Anyway," the captain said, "considering your friendship and all, I figured we'd get a little more from the DA. I mean he'd give us a little room to operate here."
Nick looked at the captain. "What did you think the man was going to do for us?" The man — Christ, listen to me.
Hawks made a backhand waving gesture. "Give us the warrants that we need, that's all. We'll do the rest."
"You got the snitch, you got the bug at Los Campos, and you got observations. We shouldn't have any problem getting whatever warrants we need," Nick said.
"I'm trying to quit smoking," the captain said. "Anyone got a smoke?"
Nick said, "So who gets lucky? Who do we want warrants for?"
"Benny Matos, the Colombian guy Medina, and Tony Bellatesta," Sonny McCabe said, cocking his head, giving Nick a smile as if he could read his mind. "What we need are search warrants for Los Campos. The club itself, the office, and the basement. And another for Matos's house and car. We grab hold of the snitch later today, see what else he's got for us."
"Sounds good to me. I mean, if your guy lays it out, shouldn't be any puzzle."
"You're new here. A new man. I don't expect that you'll understand the headaches we've had with your buddy. Robinson's a pain in the ass. Let me tell ya, I've worked with the man, he's a regular ballbreaker," McCabe said.
"He's a DA," Nick said. "What do you expect from a DA? It's his job to be a ballbreaker."
Captain Hawks puffed out some air and rubbed the back of his neck.
"Look," Nick said, "I'm here, what, two months? I came on board this case three weeks ago. I'm along for the ride, there's something you want me to do, tell me, I'll do it." The frustration of his day seeping into his voice.
"See, see, we do have a problem. I'll tell ya the dilemma, you ready to hear the dilemma?" McCabe said.
There flowed from Sonny McCabe the kind of cold-blooded toughness that had everything to do with presence.
A week ago Friday this guy Cellini from narco told Nick that McCabe was a mercenary, had no use for anyone that wasn't a cop. Unless they were gangsters laying envelopes stuffed fat with cash into his hand. Nick figured it was something Cellini would know.
Nick and Sonny were both first-graders and Nick had heard the rumors, the stories about Sonny McCabe. Like he was the most corrupt cop who ever breathed. His affair, his life. This corrupt-cop business was a touchy subject for Nick. Years ago he'd thrown in the idealistic towel. Looking at McCabe standing there smartass and smiling gave Nick an unpleasant feeling of vertigo. What do I know, what don't I know? People do what they do and who am I to judge? McCabe staring at him and Nick could feel him thinking and wanted to shut him off, to shut off his own thinking too. These thoughts bringing him to a place he didn't want to be.
To Nick nothing symbolized Sonny McCabe's approach to the job more than the two dozen suits he owned. Silk, expensive, flashy. McCabe didn't fret a whole lot at what anyone thought, he was a well-connected first-grader from the old school. He knew his way around the police department like it was his college fraternity and he was the president. Like the story Nick had heard about how the chief of detectives had told one of his new inspectors, new to the detective division, at a medal day at headquarters, "You want to know about the Organized Crime Control Unit, ask McCabe, McCabe's your man."
Sonny was pushing forty, though he looked a lot younger, the guy still banging down doors and kicking ass. A big tough man in a job where there were a whole lot of big tough men. Even so, Sonny McCabe demanded and had the kind of celebrity that came to few cops. It was in the eyes, always in the eyes that said I don't give a shit, bring it on. He led the Saint Paddy's day parade, his chest covered with medals. Played the bagpipes too. Captain Hawks told Nick that it was as natural for Sonny McCabe to be a cop as it was for Sonny to breathe. Hawks loved the guy, would lick the soles of his feet. For years Sonny and his partner Eddie Moran were so close one couldn't floss his teeth without elbowing the other. McCabe and Moran, a latter-day version of Butch and Sundance.
Sergi Monserette said, "Nick, we need help getting the warrants, that's what we need. We need your help, buddy, that's what we're asking."
McCabe nodded and turned away, looking at the blackboard, an eraser sticking up out of his fist like a club.
"Why help?" Nick said.
"Robinson is a hardass," McCabe said, "as you well know. Tell you the truth, I don't think he likes white guys."
"Yeah?" Nick said. "What the hell am I?"
When Sonny did not answer, Captain Hawks said, "Anyway, we've had some problems with him before. He likes this case, don't get me wrong. He sees six o'clock news here."
McCabe shook his head. "He won't give me a warrant."
"C'mon," Nick said.
McCabe made a face and waved off any suggestion that he was exaggerating. "I don't want to get into the problems I've had with the man. I'm telling you Robinson won't give me a warrant."
"So how can I help you?" Nick said.
"Let me ask you," Captain Hawks said. "If you went to Robinson, applied for the warrants yourself. Said please and thank you, how would it go?"
"If I had what it takes, he'd give me the warrants. Look," Nick said, "I don't get this, you have three other people here. If Andre don't want to deal with Sonny, for whatever reason, I don't really care why, but let's say that's true, that's a fact. You still have three other people here."
"We want you to apply," McCabe said. "Trust me on this, will ya? It'll be a whole lot easier, trust me here."
"Fine," Nick said. "It's fine with me. I'll get the warrants. What's the big deal?" He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, nodding in agreement with himself.
Captain Hawks shrugged and threw Nick an apologetic smile. "You know, I knew you'd come through. I told them, I told them all. The other night, one night last week it was, anyway I'm down at Post Time, sucking down a few," Hawks said. "I'm sitting at the bar between these two guys from narcotics and your name came up. I didn't tell them we were working together; I wanted to hear what they thought."
"Did they say I was a screwup or what? I didn't get along too well there."
"Yeah!" Hawks said with a great laugh. "They said you didn't get along, but they liked you. Said you did your job. Look Nick, they said you were a tough piece of work and a stand-up guy. Just strange is all."
"Yeah?" Nick said. "What does that mean?"
"Strange? I don't know, how're you strange, Nick?"
"Not strange, forget strange. I'm not strange. Most of the people in this job are strange, not me."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Snitch by Bob Leuci. Copyright © 1997 Robert Leuci. Excerpted by permission of MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media.
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