Grizzly Dalton was telling Luke Zitto a long involved story that had something to do with a retired city bull named Bigbee, they called him Big Bear, and Big Bear was waiting at a traffic light up in the Bronx, waiting for the light to change, sitting in his big old navy-blue Cadillac, so he decides to light up a cigarette, he looks down to see where his pack is, and his foot slips off the brake—
Luke was leaning against the window wall of the Brooklyn muster room, his tanned face hard-planed in the light by the window, his eyes deepset, gray-green, and hooded, his thick arms folded, already in his black raid gear, a lean Italian-looking guy in his late forties, running about six one, one-eighty, a quality of stillness around him, no wasted motions. Even a little cold-blooded, reptilian, some of the guys thought.
Luke was listening to Grizzly’s voice, a low throaty sort of growling voice, breath smelling slightly of tobacco and coffee, and now and then looking out past Grizzly’s head to the street, downtown Brooklyn, where a dying winter light the color of lemon-butter was sifting down on the spindly bare trees along Court, making spiderweb lines on the sidewalk. Grizzly’s voice climbed an octave, apparently trying to mimic the voice of the guy who was driving the car in front of Big Bear’s Caddie—What’s your major malfunction, dickhead mothersomething, like that, in a high-pitched street-black voice—and Luke gathered that Big Bear had let his old Caddie slide forward and bump this fellow’s car, so, this being New York City and not Vermont, the guy leans out the window and says a whole lot of nasty things to this cop, who just takes it, nods, he’s keeping his temper, you know, the guy’s an obvious nutcase, right, Luke?
Luke?
Luke nodded to let Grizzly know he was hearing him, hearing the story, but he was thinking about the room, it looked more like a college lecture hall than a squad room, it was … antiseptic.
Cold.
Spreading out from a large framed color portrait of President Clinton and a smaller framed shot of Janet Reno, the bare brick walls of the big room were papered in street maps, in computer printouts of crime stats, in FBI, DEA, and Marshals Service Most Wanted mug shots, a collage of photos pinned every which way to the bulletin board—no Playboy centerfolds, no off-the-fax filthy-sick cartoons from the holdup squad or the Probation offices—the gun lockers in gray metal at the back of the room, the computers at every desk. Big NO SMOKING sign on the wall, over a copy of the new federal regulations. Man, thought Luke, still hungry for a cigarette, these guys want to live forever. Think they’re all gonna die in the best of health.
And look at them, at their desks, sitting on chairs or leaning against the walls, crowding into the room, all in shirts and ties, expensive blue suits or gray suits, most of them young and hard looking with trick haircuts and no beards, every one with his service semiauto in a Bianchi rig or a hideaway, cuffs in the small of the back, Italian loafers and suspenders, nobody smoking or even thinking about smoking—except Luke, who was always thinking about a cigarette, but who right now was thinking these guys all looked like combat yuppies, like a squad of combat accountants getting ready to sprint down into the street and pull people over for double-entry anomalies and failure to reconcile.
It was very different in Luke’s regular offices up in the Bronx. Luke and Grizzly, Rico Groza, Walt Rich, and the rest of his U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive squad worked out of a scruffy fifties-era lime-green office in the Bronx Borough Hall at Third Avenue and Tremont. The Marshals shared the space with parole and probation officers for the Bronx borough. Although Luke and the rest of the deputy marshals assigned to warrant work and Fugitive Apprehension were federal employees, they “rented” space from the borough because most of their informants were “clients” of the city’s Probation and Parole division. It made sense to work close to the city guys most likely to be acquainted with someone who knew where your federal fugitive was hiding, and who could be persuaded, by various means, to share that insight with the Marshals Service.
The Bronx squad room was your typical New York City cop facility, a mixture of Depression-era squalor and high-tech computer gear; battered gray steel desks, brown office chairs with the stuffing coming out and squeaky rollers, banks and banks of rusting metal filing cabinets, a big holding cell with pale green steel bars and a bare concrete floor, rows of overhead fluorescents that made everyone look like extras from Night of the Living Dead. The walls were covered with posters from the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, Gary Larson cartoons, Playboy centerfolds, bulletins from the Justice Department, even a blow-up of a Spy magazine cover showing Hillary Rodham Clinton in chains and leather and a studded metal pushup bra.
The atmosphere was smoky, reeked of bad coffee and dirty socks and stale air, and the southern view over the tenements and cluttered grids of the South Bronx toward Randalls Island was always yellowed by the stain of years of tobacco smoke and dust, making the borough look like a photo of New York City in the Dirty Thirties. It said a lot about Luke Zitto that he felt at home up in the Bronx and less so down in Brooklyn.
Looking at all these hard-chargers and yuppie-cops from Maryland and Washington reminded him of his age, his descending career path, and his developing sense of isolation. They also reminded him that as recently as last year, he’d been stationed in D.C. himself and had been entertaining the same delusions about promotions and pay raises and a ticket to play Beltway Bungy-Bingo with the brass at the U.S. Marshals Service HQ in Arlington. Well, all is vanity, as Miss Piggy would have said, and you can take that to the bank, my son.
Anyway, go deal with it, cops had changed, especially at the federal level. Luke could easily pick out the city bulls from the NYPD Fugitive Apprehension Team, the FAT squad. Three guys in their forties, solid and rumpled looking, with that NYPD distance they all had, as if they were the only pros in a room full of pretenders.
Hell, maybe they were right.
Grizzly Dalton’s voice changed again as his story cranked up, and Luke looked back at Grizzly again.
Now Grizzly Dalton was not a combat accountant; fifty-one this May, six two, close to two-twenty, he was providing major face-space to the World’s Best Handlebar Mustache, it rode his broad red face like steer horns on a pickup truck, and his pale blue eyes were surrounded by a fan of wrinkles, sliced over the left temple and forehead by a long white puckered-looking knife scar that interrupted his bushy eyebrow and made his left eyelid droop slightly. He had one suit, a dark brown number with too-wide lapels, and three ties, all of which looked highly infectious. Grizzly had a belly like a full spinnaker and hands like fat pink dogs. Today he was in raid gear, a black T-shirt with U.S. MARSHAL in big yellow letters on the back, black jeans and combat boots, a leather belt with a silver buckle, his gold Marshals star on the belt, and his semiauto in a rip-stop tie-down on his right thigh. He looked like Wyatt Earp—the real one, not Kevin Costner—and knew the name and history of every U.S. Marshal who had ever ridden the Old West.
And Grizzly walked the Bronx just like one of those boot-leather old-timers from Abilene or Deadwood City, with a big cheroot and a low-slung side arm. Luke liked him. Grizzly was in top gear now, inside his favorite story for the week.
So now the guy is right in Big Bear’s face, leaning in the window, a card-carrying certified New York City weasel-butt, but Big Bear is still holding his temper, he just looks straight ahead, waits for the light to change, no eye contact, ignoring the guy, dum-de-dum, just watching the light, so the black guy get this! He spits on the windshield, says something else, you know, where Big Bear could stick it, pivots and scampers back to his little shit-box Toyota with the flag of Jamaica on the back, a spray of marijuana leaves over it, and as he gets in, he flips Big Bear a finger. Can you see it?
Luke can see it.