Read Online 3 Quarters by Denis Hamill - Free Book Online

mouse, Larkin had also become something of a computer wizard, surfing the Net and tapping into the NYPD and other law-enforcement databases on the sly. After years in the Stakeout Squad and then the Intelligence Unit, he was one of those nosy old coots who had a dossier on almost everyone on the force. Knew where skeletons were buried, who was banging whom, who took extra days off, who was claiming court appearances that were canceled. He was a human database.
    Tom Larkin wasn’t muscle, but he was smart, ballsy, and loyal. Larkin had also been there the day Bobby’s father was killed in the line of duty.
    â€œGood, we might need an old fuck like him,” Gleason said.
    Of course, Bobby also counted in his younger brother, Patrick, who ran the Brooklyn Police Athletic League, working with ghetto kids in sports and recreation programs. Bobby never let Patrick come to the trial as a spectator because he didn’t want the press or the brass to make a show of him. Didn’t want to contaminate him with his scandal.
    â€œYour brother wrote me the letter asking me to look into your case,” Gleason said. “Since you gave him power of attorney, he could sign all the documents for me. I know what you said on the stand. Now tell me again. What happened that night?”
    â€œI was in this bar, called The Anchor, in Gerritsen Beach, ass end of Brooklyn, drinking beer with some guys I knew worked for Gibraltar Security. Kuzak and Zeke weren’t there. Anyway, I’m working these guys when I see the young cop, O’Brien, the one I used to work with at Brooklyn South, walk in. He’s the one from the Christmas party. He sneers at me, like he knows something. Now, I always remember this guy O’Brien as a weasel, dumb as a lost cow with a broken bell, one of those guys who became a cop because he got the shit beat out of him for his lunch money every day in the schoolyard and now he needed a gun and a badge to get even with the world.”
    â€œCarries his dick in his holster,” Gleason said.
    â€œSomething like that,” Bobby said. “So I’m asking these guys from Gibraltar what exactly goes on behind the black marble, windowless walls of their compound. The place looks like Hitler’s bunker, with video cameras scanning the street, razor wire on the roof, gates and alarms. You’d think they had nuclear secrets in there. Then O’Brien buys me a drink, which he never did in ten years of knowing him. The bartender was an old doof, name of Cleary, retired charter fisherman from Sheepshead Bay, who conveniently died in a fall down a flight of stairs before we could subpoena him to trial. So, anyway, I take the beer, a glass of tap. I buy the next round, trying to oil these guys . . . and, man, suddenly, blanko!”
    â€œThe bartender, the dead fuck, he Mickey-Finned ya,” Gleason said. “Rohypnol, probably. Nicknamed roofies . The ‘date-rape drug.’ I almost defended a guy who raped a series of women with Rohypnol. Slip that into someone’s drink and good night, Nurse; good morning, Doctor, or undertaker. That rock star, Kurt Cobain—it put him in a coma once. My daughters talked me out of defending this rape suspect because they knew a girl who had been raped with Rohypnol. Ten times stronger than Xanax. Really, really bad shit.”
    â€œI have no idea what the hell it was,” said Bobby. “But, man, next thing I know I’m being woken up in the early morning in my car by cops, brass, Brooklyn DA investigators. Twirling cop-car lights, flashlights, forensic flashbulbs. I’m parked in Evergreen Cemetery, outside the crematorium, covered in blood. My whole car is soaked in blood. I ask what the fuck is going on, and Cis Tuzio is on the scene herself with a Brooklyn DA detective named Hanratty. She tells me that a body had been illegally cremated in the crematorium last night. Plus, she says, homicide police did a