A Piece of the Action sm-5

by Stephen Solomita

  Moodrow led with a hard, straight right. It missed, but not by much. O’Grady didn’t bother to counter. He came inside and banged his forehead into Moodrow’s nose. Moodrow heard the cartilage in his nose snap, but he had no sense that it was his own flesh being torn. It was more like someone in another room had broken a pencil. O’Grady, aided by the referee, tried to pull back, but Moodrow held him long enough to put his glove on the fireman’s cheek and rub the laces across his face.

  O’Grady managed to jerk away and the referee, incensed, stepped between the two fighters before Moodrow could take up the pursuit. “I’m takin’ a point,” he shouted. “Y’understand? I’m takin’ a point for that.”

  Spinelli signalled his decision by turning to each of the three judges and raising his index finger. The cops in the audience sent up a howl. They’d been fairly quiet before, not sure how to react to Moodrow’s tactics. Now they were screaming for O’Grady’s (and Spinelli’s) blood.

  The bell rang a few seconds later and this time O’Grady didn’t wait to be hit. He bounced away like a puppet on the end of a string. Moodrow, standing in the center of the ring, turned to the crowd, spread his arms in a gesture of wonder, then minced back to his corner. The cops roared with laughter.

  “How’s the eye?”

  “Forget the eye,” Epstein nearly shouted. He pressed a hot-water bottle filled with shaved ice against his fighter’s nose, trying to spread the swelling out over Moodrow’s face. “Your nose is broken. I think it might be split.”

  “I know. I can taste the blood. It’s kind of salty. Maybe we oughta save it and pour it over a hard-boiled egg.”

  “You’re a funny guy, Stanley. But this ain’t The Milton Berle Show.”

  “The fight’s over, Sarge,” Moodrow replied calmly. “He’s mine.”

  “This I already know.”

  O’Grady began the fourth round with a five-punch combination that stopped Moodrow in his tracks. Instinctively, Moodrow grabbed O’Grady and pulled him close. Spinelli, still furious, yanked at Moodrow’s left arm, tugging it back far enough to allow O’Grady to drive his right fist into Moodrow’s ribs.

  Stunned at the turn of events, Spinelli let Moodrow’s arm go and started to say something to O’Grady. He wasn’t fast enough to get his message across. Moodrow grabbed O’Grady’s face with his left hand and stuck the thumb of his glove into O’Grady’s eye. Once again, O’Grady tried to pull away, but this time Moodrow’s follow-up right caught the top of the fireman’s head.

  O’Grady responded by coming directly at Moodrow for the first time. And Moodrow, for the first time, began to give ground. He took a step backward, then another, then another, then set himself and put every ounce of his 247 pounds into a short left hook. O’Grady ran directly into the punch. It stopped him in his tracks, paralyzed him just long enough for the following right hand to catch him flush on the jaw. He trembled for a moment, like a sapling hit with a sledgehammer, then his body went limp and he dropped to the canvas. Moodrow, looking for any sign of consciousness, knew the fight was over when he distinctly heard the crunch of his opponent’s skull smashing into the floor of the ring.

  “Jesus, Stanley. Jesus Christ.” Epstein ran to the center of the ring and tried to remove his fighter’s mouthpiece.

  Moodrow, his arms raised in triumph, ignored his trainer. He walked over to the ropes and saluted the assembled brass. The cheering continued for several minutes, then finally died away. Moodrow dropped his arms, weary for the first time. The pain was coming. He could feel it in his nose and ribs, only a dull ache now, but soon it would overwhelm him. Still, he wanted to drag it out as long as possible, to imprint his victory in the minds of every cop in the crowd.

  “Go shake your opponent’s hand, Stanley.”

  “What?” Moodrow looked down at his trainer as if surprised to find him there.

  “Go shake his fucking hand. Tell him it was a great fight. Tell him anything, but don’t leave him sitting there.”

  “You’re right,” Moodrow admitted. “I forgot.”

  O’Grady’s handlers had him up and sitting on his stool when Moodrow approached. The fireman stared at the bloody apparition kneeling in front of him for a moment, then nodded his head. “You fought hard, Stanley,” he said. “You deserve it. But I want a rematch. One more fight to settle the issue.”

  “Sorry, pal,” Moodrow replied evenly, “but you’re gonna have to learn to live with this one. I’m retired.”

  Three

  January 3

  Patrick Francis Matthew Cohan lingered in the bedroom of his ten-room Bayside home, despite the fact that most of his guests had already arrived. He knew his guests were out there, having met each of them at the door. He also knew about the gusty winds blowing through the borough of Queens. Those winds had greeted him each time he opened the door and now he was thoroughly absorbed in the task of patting rebellious strands of feathery white hair back into place.

  Pat Cohan was always careful with his hair because he wore it long, despite the current fashion. There was no rebellion involved in the style he preferred. (Patrick Cohan was, after all, a full inspector in the NYPD, not some Greenwich Village beatnik.) It was just that a tall, broadly built, fifty-nine-year-old Irishman with a thick head of silvery hair couldn’t, on pain of being declared a Protestant, wear that hair in a two-inch brush cut.

  Pat Cohan thought of his hair as “the mane,” called it that as he worked each strand into place. “Guess it’s time to tame the mane.” His daughter, Kathleen, liked to tease him about the amount of time he spent in front of the mirror. Pat didn’t particularly like to be teased-he only took it from “my darlin’ Kathleen”-but he also knew it was important that his hair always be neatly combed. Short hair, in 1958, was a badge of patriotism, the physical equivalent of a loyalty oath.

  Satisfied that every hair was firmly in place, Pat Cohan drew himself up to his full height and measured the result of his efforts. His “mane” floated above a large skull, just as it was supposed to. It framed his broad brow, strong assertive jaw and blue, blue eyes. He liked to describe those eyes (to himself, at least) as the color of an Irish lake under a cloudless sky.

  Of course, there were the negatives. (There were bound to be negatives when you were on the wrong side of fifty and tied to a desk.) His once-flat belly had gone the way of his colleagues’ hair. And Pat Cohan had jowls, too, and the florid complexion and small broken veins of the habitual drinker. Not that he was a drunk, by any means. Alcohol was the curse of the Irish and every Irishman knew it. But the functions he was expected to attend as an NYPD inspector often required him to stand in a little circle of politicians with a drink in his hand. There were only forty-two inspectors in the 24,000-man NYPD and they spent as much time on the politics of the job as they did on policing the City of New York.

  But not tonight. Tonight was special. This was a ‘friends only’ occasion and Pat Cohan’s definition of the word ‘friend’ excluded all politicians. As far as Pat Cohan was concerned, politicians, with their addiction to public opinion, were only one step above the journalists who created that opinion.

  “Not bad, Pat,” he said to himself, pulling his vest down over his belly. He was wearing a black three-piece suit cut from the finest Irish broadcloth and tailored by a Lithuanian from the Yorkville section of Manhattan. The black suit was his trademark and, offset by a starched white shirt and a blue tie that matched his eyes, it made him instantly recognizable, even from a distance, whenever he was out of uniform.

  Pat Cohan was just about to return to his guests when someone knocked softly on the closed bedroom door. The door opened before he had a chance to offer an invitation and Detective Lieutenant Salvatore Patero entered. Patero, Cohan noted, was wearing his customary white, two-button cardigan, a duplicate of the cardigans Bing Crosby wore on the golf course. Pat Cohan, who’d seen many similar sweaters on Salvatore Patero’s back, felt that putting a guinea into the Crooner’s cardigan was like putting the vestme
nts of a Cardinal on a gibbering ape.

  “Salvatore, my boy,” Pat Cohan said quietly, “it’s not polite to barge into another man’s bedroom.”

  Patero’s thick, dark eyebrows shot up in wonder. The gesture was habitual and every bit as conscious as Pat Cohan’s hearty Irish handshake. “I knocked, didn’t I? I mean, your wife’s in the other room, Pat.”

  Cohan sighed and let the matter drop. The guineas were coming into the Department in larger and larger numbers. You had to make a place for them, but that didn’t mean they were civilized. Civility would take another generation to master. At least.

  “Let’s hear the news, boyo. And would you try to make it good news. We’re celebratin’ my daughter’s engagement tonight.”

  Everything about Salvatore Patero was sharp, from his chin to his chiseled Roman nose to his wiry hair. Even his slim, muscular body was all knees and elbows. Patero didn’t particularly like cops. He didn’t like being a cop, but “like” just wasn’t part of the deal for kids from large families. Not when it came to choosing a profession. Patero had first gone out to work when he was eleven years old, carrying milk, eggs and butter from a horse-drawn cart to the doorsteps of Brooklyn housewives. He certainly liked being a cop better than that.

  “I spoke to Accacio. I told him exactly what you said.”

  “Which was what, Sal?”

  Patero held his temper. Maybe, one glorious day in the future, the pompous Irish assholes who ruled the Department would be driven out, but he’d be long retired before it happened. “I told him how unhappy the Department was about what happened at the whorehouse. I told him I didn’t know if we should protect a guy who can’t take care of his own business, who hires amateurs instead of professionals. I told him it’s not nineteen twenty-five anymore. Civilians ain’t supposed to get hurt, much less dead. You got a problem, put it in a Jersey swamp where it belongs.”

  “I’ll bet he loved hearing that.”

  “He didn’t react much. I mean he didn’t seem frightened or anything. He told me the thing at the O’Neills’ was an accident. He said if there was any heat coming down, he’d cut off the links between his people and the event.”

  “The lad is takin’ steps to protect himself,” Cohan interrupted. “How nice. Does he think we’re worried about him?”

  Patero threw his palms up in the air and shrugged his shoulders. “What could I say, Pat? It’s the practical thing to do. I mean, I know you can handle your end, but there’s pressure comin’ down from the precinct.”

  “From exactly who in the precinct? I’ve already spoken to the captain and he assured me …”

  “We’re talkin’ about a homicide, Pat, not about gambling and whores. It’s not a thing a detective can ignore.”

  “Be serious, boyo. Dead Puerto Ricans are as expendable as you guineas were forty years ago. Tell our friend Accacio that he needn’t fear the Seventh Precinct. He should be afraid of me.”

  “That’s what I told him.” Patero absorbed the remark about “you guineas.” It was the price he had to pay and he knew it. “Look, Pat, I just wanna go on the record about this. We’re not doing the right thing, here. I’m not saying we should go out and bust Steppy Accacio. But I am saying we should let the investigation take its course. It was a homicide.”

  “You finished, Sal?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Now, I want to speak to you about my prospective son-in-law.”

  “Stan ‘The Man’ Moodrow? The hero?” Patero laughed softly, covering his mouth with his hand.

  “Shut up, Sal.” Pat Cohan’s voice demanded obedience. He waited until he got it, before continuing. “If you think what he did was nothing, boyo, you could always arrange to get in the ring with him. Maybe you could teach him a lesson.”

  Patero’s face reddened. Like most cops, he didn’t react well to having his courage challenged, but he couldn’t very well punch the shit out of Pat Cohan, he being a lousy detective and Patrick Cohan a full inspector. Besides, Pat Cohan wasn’t that far off the mark. Salvatore Patero would sooner have been assigned to the Bomb Squad than get in the ring with Stanley Moodrow.

  “Don’t take it the wrong way, Pat. I know Stanley’s got the balls of an elephant. Besides, I like the kid.”

  “That’s good to hear, boyo, because you’ll be seein’ a lot of him. Stanley’s gettin’ his gold shield tonight, though for the life of me, I can’t see why he wants it.” Pat Cohan had nothing but contempt for the “elite” Detective Division. They strutted through the precincts in their suits and overcoats like roosters in a barnyard, but they rarely had two dimes to rub together. You couldn’t blame young cops for being drawn to the Gold Shield, but the truth was that there was no money to be made from assignments to the Missing Persons Bureau or the Photographic Unit or the Crime Laboratory. The only potential money maker in the Detective Division was the Narcotics Bureau. Fifteen years earlier, when Pat Cohan was a mere precinct captain, heroin had been a minor part of the crime pantheon. Now, it was the scourge of the city.

  “What I want you to do, Sal,” he continued, “is show him the ropes. I want you to take him around with you.”

  “Look, Pat, I don’t give out assignments …”

  “He’ll be assigned to you. It’s already taken care of.”

  Patero shook his head. “You’re makin’ a mistake here. You oughta put the kid in a decent squad and let him work his way up. The way you wanna do it, he’s gonna be the most unpopular suit in the precinct.”

  “Stanley Moodrow’s going to marry my daughter. I don’t want him takin’ her back to some Lower East Side tenement after the honeymoon.” Pat Cohan’s voice was devoid of any Irish charm. “Darlin’ Kathleen” was his only child. His only surviving child. His son, Peter, had been lost in the waters off Omaha Beach. They hadn’t even found his body.

  “All right, Pat, I catch your drift. But I got my doubts that you’ll get what you’re after. The kid wants to be a detective. He wants to solve crimes, make arrests. It’s only natural.”

  Pat Cohan thought it over for a minute. There was more than a little truth in Patero’s argument. Stanley Moodrow was naive.

  “Boyo,” Cohan said, “you may be right, but the thing of it is that I’ve got a little problem. Stanley’s tough as nails. He’s also smart and ambitious, and I suppose that’s all to the good. But he doesn’t know anything about how the Department operates. I want him to find out before he marries my daughter.”

  Stanley Moodrow stood in the center of Pat Cohan’s living room, his left arm draped about the shoulders of his fiancee, Kathleen, and recited the details of his recent victory to several newly arrived guests. It was the fifth re-telling of the evening, but there was no way he could get out of it. The guests were all cops and they all outranked him.

  “Were you trying to get him to come after you? Was that a plan or a lucky break?” The cop standing in front of him (Moodrow couldn’t remember his name or his rank) was middle-aged and stubby. As he spoke, he pulled on the thoroughly chewed end of a long cigar, sending clouds of smoke into the champion’s face.

  What Moodrow wanted, more than anything else, was to sit down. No, lie down. His upper body ached, every inch of it, from his neck to his waist. His right shoulder spit fire whenever he lifted it to shake another hand.

  “I had to make him come to me,” Moodrow said. “I knew I couldn’t catch him.”

  What he knew was that he looked like one of the gargoyles on St. Patrick’s Cathedral. X rays had shown that his nose wasn’t as badly broken as he and Epstein had thought, but it was definitely broken. The doctor in the Bellevue Hospital emergency room had fitted his nose with a V-shaped metal plate, then covered the plate and half of Moodrow’s face with white surgical tape.

  But the doctor hadn’t bothered to cover the eleven stitches he’d put in his patient’s eyebrow. They stood out like insects, like ants, and drew even more attention to the swelling around Moodrow’s eye. The bruise hadn’t begun to darken yet
. It was still red and puffy, but within a few days it would turn black, then green, then yellow. It wouldn’t disappear for a week.

  Moodrow’s three inquisitors, the ritual of congratulations now complete, turned tail and headed for the bar. Moodrow watched them with contempt. How was it possible that what he did in the ring somehow made them better? It was funny how they were perfectly willing to share in the victory, but they couldn’t feel any of the pain. They could raise their shoulders without a twinge and they did so eagerly, glasses of Irish whiskey clutched in their hands.

  “How ya doin’, Stanley?” Kathleen Cohan’s arm encircled his waist and squeezed. The gesture was meant to be affectionate, but the sharp protest from his bruised ribs made it seem more like atrocious assault.

  “Easy, Kate. My ribs are killing me. You got any aspirin?” He looked down at her upturned face and smiled. She was so perfectly, wonderfully Irish, with her pug nose and blue eyes and the spray of freckles high on each cheek. He could never quite accept the fact that she loved him. Especially since she hated violence. He’d managed to get the attention of half the Department with his fists, but what in the world had gotten her attention?

  “Sure, I’ll get you some,” she said, but before she could move away, her father entered the room and approached the two of them.

  “You okay, boyo?” he said to Moodrow.

  “I’d like to make it a short night, if you don’t mind, Pat. My face feels like a water balloon.”

  “I understand,” he replied shortly. Moodrow’s air of independence irritated Pat Cohan. It wasn’t that Moodrow didn’t want to show the proper attitude. He just didn’t know how. “I’ll make the announcements right away.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned to his guests. “Your attention, ladies and gentlemen. Your attention, if you please. I’ve two important announcements to make.” He paused while the assembled cops and cops’ wives moved closer. “The first thing I have to say is that Patrolman Stanley Moodrow is a patrolman no more.” He held up a thin leather billfold, hesitated for a moment, then let it drop open to reveal the coveted gold shield. “He is now to be called Detective, Third Grade, Stanley Moodrow.” Cohan handed the billfold to Moodrow. “My heartiest congratulations.” He grabbed Moodrow’s sore right hand and gave it his Irish best. “If ever a man deserved his reward, it’s you, boyo.”