Part 51 (1/2)
He walked back to his car and turned off the flas.h.i.+ng lights.
”What did he give you?” Mr. Rosselli asked.
”Feels like photographs,” Mr. Savarese replied.
”Of who?”
”There's two of them, Mr. S.,” Mr. Rosselli said. ”I adjusted the rearview mirror. I can see good.”
”Two of who?”
”Two cop cars. The other's got a lieutenant or something in it. Another n.i.g.g.e.r.''
”Get me out of here,” Mr. Savarese said.
”You got it, Mr. S.,” Mr. Ca.s.sandro said.
Officer Tiny Lewis watched until the Lincoln was out of sight, then drove to a diner on South 16th Street. Lieutenant Foster H. Lewis, Sr., drove his car into the parking lot immediately afterward.
A very large police officer, obviously Irish, about forty years of age, came out of the diner.
”Thank you,” Lieutenant Lewis said to him.
”Don't talk to me, I haven't seen you once on this s.h.i.+ft,” the officer said, and got in the car Officer Lewis had been driving and drove away.
Officer Lewis got in the car with his father.
”You going to tell me what that was all about?”
”What what was all about?”
”Thanks a lot, Pop.”
”You did that rather well for a rookie who's never spent sixty seconds on the street,” Lieutenant Lewis said.
”Runs in the family.”
”Maybe.”
”You're really not going to tell me what that was all about?”
”What what was all about?”
The next day, Friday, Officer Matthew W. Payne was stopped twice by law-enforcement authorities while operating a motor vehicle.
The first instance took place on the Hutchinson River Parkway, north of the Borough of Manhattan, some twelve miles south of Scarsdale.
An enormous New York State trooper, wearing a Smoky the Bear hat sat in his car and waited until he had received acknowledgment of his radio call that he had stopped a 1973 Porsche 911, Pennsylvania tag GHC-4048, for exceeding the posted limit of fifty miles an hour by twenty miles per hour. Then he got out of the car and cautiously approached the driver's window.
Nice-looking kid, he thought. But twenty miles over the limit is just too much.
And then he saw something on the floorboard. His entire demeanor changed. He nicked the top of his holster off and put his hand on the b.u.t.t of his revolver.
”Put your hands out the window where I can see both of them,” he ordered in a no-nonsense voice.
”What?”
”Do what I say, pal!”
Both hands came out the window.
”There's a pistol on your floorboard. You got a permit for it?”
”I'm a cop,” Matt said. ”I wondered what the h.e.l.l you were up to. You scared the h.e.l.l out of me.”
”You got a badge?”
”I've got photo ID in my jacket pocket.”
”Let's see it. Move slowly. You know the routine.”
Matt produced his identification.
”You normally drive around with your pistol on the floorboard?”
”It's in an ankle holster. It rubs your leg if it's on a long time.”
”I never tried one,” the state trooper said. ”I always thought I would kick my leg or something, and the gun would go flying across a room.”
”No. They work. They just rub your leg, is all.”
”You working?”
”I cannot tell a lie, I'm on my way to see my girl.”
”This is yours?” the state trooper asked incredulously, gesturing at the Porsche.
”We take them away from drug dealers,” Matt said.
”You work Narcotics?”
”Until Monday I work in something called Special Operations.”
”Nice work.”
”Yeah. It was. Monday I go back in uniform.”
”Into each life some rain must fall,” the state trooper said. ”Take it easy.”