The Lightning Rule by Brett Ellen Block Read Free Book Online Page A

stuff, nothing that involved the mob, so he had never been told to look the other way, not until he arrived in Homicide. On the Vernon Young case, Ahern ordered him to do exactly that.
    Because Fossum valued his life too much to volunteer to view a lineup of Giancone and Lucaro, Emmett was stuck with a case he couldn’t close, a bad precedent for a new Homicide detective to set. Emmett didn’t blame him, but Fossum wasn’t out of the woods. He was a witness. Listing him in the report as such would have signed his death warrant. If the mob didn’t hit him, a cop in Caligrassi’s pocket would. To protect him, Emmett had omitted Otis’s name from the file, referring to him only as “a Negro bystander.” Emmett didn’t want to wind up with another unsolvable case, this one with Otis Fossum’s name on it.
    Emmett had been forced to fudge the Vernon Young report, and that got under his skin. A common practice at the precinct, it ran counter to his Jesuit training and counter to who he was. Beneath his moral protocol, however, pulsed the allegiance Emmett’s father had poundedinto him. A union man through and through, his father never sided against his own kind. When the union said “Strike,” his father took to the picket lines, regardless that the family would have to survive on bologna sandwiches and stewed cabbage for weeks at a stretch. Emmett’s father detested the scabs who crossed the picket lines and raised his sons to respect the union as if it were its own religion and never to fight the flow. Boats made waves. People paddled. That was his father’s favorite phrase, and he repeated it so often that Emmett couldn’t help but take it to heart. Fortunately, Emmett didn’t have to cross any line to keep Fossum alive. At least, he thought he didn’t.
    Word of his selective editing circulated in the division. Giancone must have dropped a hint. That was when the pressure started. Ahern had called Emmett into his office, an alcove at the rear of the squad room, and implied that the report was incomplete. He suggested that Emmett redo it. Ahern wouldn’t say explicitly what was missing. He didn’t need to.
    There were no secrets in the police station. Everyone was aware of who was on the take and who wasn’t. Emmett had no loyalty to the Irish gangsters or the East Ward’s mob. Being Polish made him a minority in more ways than one. When Emmett was on probation as a patrolman, a few of his fellow rookies had peaked at the personnel files and found out where he had been prior to the academy. From then on, nobody would walk a beat with him. As a detective, no one would partner with Emmett. Though he hadn’t actually become a priest, the stigma persisted. Nobody was keen to be in the company of a man that they felt the impulse to confess to. They knew better than to confess anything to a cop.
    The night after his meeting with Ahern, Emmett had bought the bottle of Jim Beam and sat up all evening deciding what he was going to do, unable to open the bourbon. To the Jesuits, obedience entailed following the direct commands of the superior perinde a cadaver. The translation: “much like a corpse.” A Jesuit followed orders without hesitation. Blind faith in the superior’s wisdom was all the faith required. If Emmett gave Ahern what he was asking for, he had complete faith that Otis Fossum would be dead within a week.
    The next morning, Emmett resubmitted the same report, uncorrected, and the lieutenant was clear where he stood. Retribution was swift. Emmett caught fellow Homicide detective Nic Serletto digging through his drawers that afternoon, searching for the missing name of the witness. Serletto and his partner, Larry Hochwald, had graduated to Homicide via Vice. Giancone was a friend of theirs, and they made no effort to hide their affiliation with him and with Ruggiero Caligrassi. They were garden variety thugs, the sort who would steal tips off restaurant tables when the waitress wasn’t looking, then