Saints Of New York by R.J. Ellory Read Free Book Online Page B

mortgage, and he has a network
of CIs and allies in and around the Brooklyn area to support. So: he's taking
money left, right and center any which way he can find it, and he's asked to
join the Organized Crime Control Bureau, supposed to be the cleanest, most
upright and honest crew in the city. These are the new Untouchables. These are
the guys who are going to break the back of the Mafia in New York. He gets with
them, and he finds out that a lot of these guys are no different from him, just
regular humps trying to make a living and not get shot. They got wives and kids
and mistresses, they have rent to pay, and they're as open to temptation as
anyone on the street. But now the stakes are so much higher. You give
information to the Mafia and the payback is huge. Where some cop would have
gotten a hundred bucks for looking after some businessman who wanted to lose a
truck full of TVs and claim the insurance, now he's given five or ten times
that much for looking the other way. Such cops stayed there for ten years,
never got so much as a caution or a written warning. They were the Saints of
New York, you see, and they couldn't put a foot wrong.'
    'And they were all like this? All
corrupt?'
    'God no, not at all. There were a
good percentage that stayed clean, worked hard, got the job done. But my
father, the big hero that everyone seems to have a hard-on for, the guy whose
standards I have failed to meet on every level, he was corrupt, and as far as I can tell he was probably the worst
of the lot.'
    'And you resent it when people
compare you to him?'
    'Resent it? Why would I resent
it. The motherfucker's dead.'
    'I don't mean resent him, I mean
whether or not you resent the fact that people talk about him as a hero when he
wasn't.'
    'People understand what they
want, they say what they what. I haven't got the time or the inclination to
change their minds. I think the fact that I know the truth is enough.'
    'Is it? Do you really think
that?'
    'Well, I fucking well hope so,
because I don't have anything else.'
    'So, tell me what he was like. And these people, the Saints of
New York.'
    'They were all
OCCB cops, and they were all crooked like fishhooks. A handful of them inside
the Bureau were making life very easy for the mob at JFK Airport.'
    'The Lufthansa
heist? I've seen Goodfellas.'
    'Well, you've
seen the flag on the top of the mountain, sweetheart, but you ain't seen the
mountain yet. I'm afraid that is gonna have to wait. I have a new partner to
meet this morning.'
    'Frank . . .
hell, Frank, this is why you need to be on time. We start into something like this and we need
to get to a good point before we leave it.'
    'Life moves on,
you know? I'm sure your day is filled with excitements just as mine is.'
    'Well. . . We'll
carry on tomorrow.'
    'Sure.'
    'And you're
doing okay otherwise?'
    'I'm okay, yes.'
    'You sleeping?'
    'On and off.'
    'You want
something to help you sleep?'
    'Christ no. I
start down that route I ain't coming back.'
    'Okay, Frank.
I'll see you tomorrow. You have a good day now.

TEN
     
    Radick
and Parrish had not seen one another for a good two or three years. Radick had
come from Narcotics, had hung in there until what he saw and what he heard went
more than skin- deep. You could see only so many dead junkies, could
interrogate only so many dealers, watch only so many cases fold up and die,
before you started taking that shit home.
    As far as
Parrish was concerned, Jimmy Radick looked exactly the same.
    To Radick,
however, Frank Parrish appeared to have lost twenty pounds and aged a decade.
He wore the spiritual bruises of the conscience drinker: a double or two to
blunt the edges of the day's disappointments, another couple to soften the
guilt about drinking. It went downhill from there. The worst cases came in
still drunk from the night before, spent two out of five shifts with the
medical officer. Whatever wagon they kept trying to get on had a slide fitted.
    'I don't need to
introduce you, do I?'