New York Minute

Friday Afternoon, 8 July 1977

COUNTRY CLUB, THE BRONX

"Does anybody here own a yacht?" Kane asked.

"Does anybody in here look like they could own a yacht?" Conner Riley replied. "We're drinking nickel draft, Will."

"The place is called the Pelham Bay Yacht Club," Kane pointed out.

They were seated at an old wooden bar, the surface scarred by generations of drinking. The view out the row of propped open windows was Long Island Sound between the Bronx and City Island. Sunlight danced on small waves. Directly across the water was Rodman's Neck, where the NYPD ran a firing range. To the left, along this side, was Pelham Bay Park, and on the far end of that, next to Coop City, in an accurate barometer of the condition of the city, was a massive ten story high toxic dump that the Sanitation Department was adding to on a daily basis with an unending convoy of garbage trucks. At one time a previous mayor, Lindsay, had suggested it could be made into a ski slope after it was closed. There were many reasons he wasn't mayor anymore and his presidential ambitions had sputtered to vapor, but that bright idea hadn't helped.

"Every place gotta be called something," Conner reasoned. "It's on the water. It's a club. Got to be a member."

"Is that expensive?"

"Not if you're a cop." Conner drained the mug and leaned over the bar, filling it from the unmanned tap. He was a blocky man, once strong, now booze flabby. His face was red and mapped with broken blood vessels that pointed to a bad ending. Thinning brown hair kept baldness at bay for the time being. He wore a cheap suit, the tie pulled loose and the top shirt button open. The possibility of it ever being closed was remote, perhaps impossible. A snub-nose .38 was on his belt, right front, a silver badge on the left front, indicating plainclothes, not the gold of detective, but the step up from wearing the blue uniform of patrol.

"You pay as you go or you have a tab?" Kane asked, his own already empty.

"I'm keeping count." Conner gave Kane a questioning look but grabbed his glass and topped it off.

"Right," Kane said.

A couple of tables were occupied by folks like Conner; fat, older white guys who were either retired or marking time to retire, who served themselves as needed, all doing the tap. The well drinks were for later. The building was two stories, faded white, on the eastern edge of the Bronx. There was a yardarm in front from which the club's flag hung, occasionally energized by a breeze; a white ship's wheel with spokes against a blue background and the white letters PBYC, not exactly on a level with a Union Jack pennant or Stars and Bars.

"What's so important you call me off the job?" Conner asked. "You seen your mom lately?"

"Nice try, Uncle Conner. Did someone call you this morning asking about me?"

Conner looked out the old, open windows at the water. "I think in the old days there might have been yachts. Big boats at least. Used to tie up to the dock before it fell apart. Fancy people with money. Back when the north Bronx still had some farms. I remember when your folks moved up to their place from the apartment on 148th Street. Guy dressed in white delivered milk door to door in a box out front of each house from a local dairy, fresh that morning."

"Yeah, the good old days," Kane said. He had faint, black and white memories of that. And of an old man walking next to a mule pulling a wagon rattling along on the cobblestone street, calling out in a strong foreign accent for housewives to bring their knives and scissors out to be sharpened.

His tone got his uncle's attention.

"Someone called me," Conner admitted. "Had my home phone number which ain't listed. Woke me up, which is never good. Woke the lil' missus up which is worse."