A Piece of the Action sm-5

by Stephen Solomita

“I suppose you’ve got that all figured out.”

  “I haven’t been wasting my time thinkin’ about the past.”

  “Look, you guinea bastard, keep the sarcasm to yourself. I don’t need that crap.”

  Patero laughed. “Hey, Pat,” he said quietly, “you and me are sleepin’ in the same bed. If I get fucked, you get fucked. Why don’t you try to clear the potatoes out of your stupid Irish brain? Just long enough so you could hear what I’m gonna say. The first thing is we gotta separate young Stanley from the Seventh Precinct. I’m not talkin’ about a suspension. Just a two-week vacation, followed by a transfer to the Hundred and First in Far Rockaway. That’s step number one. Step number two is I make it clear to the squad that Stanley Moodrow is not to have access to the paperwork in the Melenguez case. Under pain of following young Stanley out to the boonies. Maybe we could also spread the rumor that Stanley is talkin’ to the press, that he’s tearin’ down the blue wall. I’m not sure the boys’ll buy it, but it can’t hurt us.”

  “Wait a second, Sal. How do you know he hasn’t already seen the file?”

  “Seeing the file is one thing. Copying it is something else. Now, step number three is we prepare a case against Stanley for corruption. Or dereliction of duty. Or disobedience. Or spitting on the sidewalk. Something to use if he doesn’t take the hint. Because the thing about it is we can’t call him off. Any cop has the right to investigate any crime when he’s off-duty. It’s a tradition and we can’t mess with it. Now …”

  The doorbell rang, interrupting Patero’s lecture. Pat Cohan knew who it was. He also knew that he should stay in his den, that there was nothing to be gained from a confrontation with Stanley Moodrow. But he got up anyway, got up and walked out of the den to find his darlin’ Kathleen in Stanley Moodrow’s arms.

  “Lord Jesus,” he muttered. “What have I done to myself?”

  The young couple gave him plenty of time to think about it. Reacting like any pair of lovers after a separation, they continued to hold each other, continued to press their lips together.

  “Stanley,” Pat Cohan said when he could stand it no longer. “Stanley.”

  Kate jumped back, her hands unconsciously smoothing her skirt. “Daddy,” she said, “I didn’t know you were there.”

  “It’s all right, darlin’, I was young once, too. Stanley, boyo, do you think I could have a moment? Just a moment, then I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone.”

  “Sure, Pat. Whatever you want.”

  Pat Cohan felt his ears begin to redden. There hadn’t been a hint of fear in Moodrow’s voice. It was as if he was totally unaware of what happened to cops who made enemies of NYPD inspectors. Unaware or unconcerned.

  “Hey, Stanley,” Patero said as Moodrow came into the den. “What’s goin’ on?”

  “Nothing much, Sal. How’s by you?”

  “Enough of the bullshit,” Cohan said, trying to keep his voice down. “Just what in hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m visiting my fiancee.”

  Cohan’s mouth opened, but no words came out. Stanley Moodrow was staring directly into his eyes.

  “Relax, Stanley,” Patero said. “You know what Pat’s talkin’ about. He’s talkin’ about your visit to the Pitt Street pimp. Can I assume you weren’t there to sample the merchandise?”

  “What I do on my own time is my own business. The job doesn’t own me twenty-four hours a day. Maybe you wanna tell me why you bullshitted me about Luis Melenguez.”

  “If you had a problem with what I told you,” Pat Cohan shouted, “you should’ve come to me.”

  “Sal,” Moodrow said, ignoring Cohan altogether, “We’re talking about a homicide. You’re a cop. How can you bury a homicide?”

  “What makes you think I’m burying anything?”

  Moodrow hesitated, then smiled. “Melenguez was my neighbor. I saw his wife the other day. She came from Puerto Rico to pick up her husband’s effects. We talked for a long time. A long time. What you told me about Melenguez being a pimp was pure bullshit. He was just an ordinary citizen who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Think of it like this, Sal-if you’re not guilty, then you got nothin’ to worry about.”

  “You,” Pat Cohan said, “you have plenty to worry about. I’m going to bury you so deep, they won’t be able to find you with a steamshovel.”

  “You already gave that speech,” Moodrow growled, turning back to the inspector. “Two days ago. Wanna hear something funny? I believe you a hundred percent. Which means I don’t have a hell of a lot to lose.”

  “All right, enough small talk.” Patero got up and approached Moodrow. “Here’s what’s gonna happen, Stanley,” he said, poking his index finger into Moodrow’s chest. “You’re on vacation, starting right now. You got a problem, take it to the P.B.A. Plus, I don’t wanna see you in the Seventh. Maybe I can’t lock the door, but I got a lotta friends in that building. You come in there, someone’s gonna be watchin’ you every minute. Besides which the Melenguez paperwork’s already gone over to Organized Crime. Where everybody’s my friend.”

  Patero continued to jab Moodrow’s chest as he spoke, his thin smile gradually widening into a grin. “You figure out what I’m sayin’ yet, Stanley?”

  “I know what you’re trying to do, Sal,” Moodrow answered. “You want me to hit you. You want me to hit a superior officer in front of an officer who’s even superior to him. But I gotta tell you something you haven’t figured out yet.” He grabbed Patero’s wrist and held it motionless. “If it comes down to a street-fight, you’re gonna get your ass kicked. Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll go join my fiancee.”

  Pat Cohan waited until the door closed behind Moodrow before he spoke. He was much calmer now. “Know what I’m gonna do, Sal? I’m gonna transfer the bastard out, just like you said. Then I’m gonna wait. A year. Two years. Until he thinks I’ve forgotten. When the right time comes, I’m gonna set him up. I’m gonna put him in prison, then I’m gonna visit him and tell him what I did. Because nobody …”

  “Look, Pat, you’re …”

  “Don’t interrupt me, Sal. I want you to get to Faci tonight. I want you to tell him the shooters have to go. I don’t care if he ships them across the ocean to spaghetti heaven or buries them in a swamp. They gotta vanish.”

  “I’m not gonna say any such thing, Pat. It’s much too early to panic. How do you know what Stanley’s gonna find out? Besides, Faci and his boss aren’t stupid. If we let them know what’s happening, they’ll handle things on their own.”

  “Give me a number, Sal.”

  “What?”

  “Give me a phone number. Faci’s. Accacio’s. I don’t care which one. Give me the number and I’ll take care of it myself.”

  Stanley Moodrow couldn’t stop thinking about how easy it would be. He and Kate were sitting together on the living room couch watching television. Pat Cohan was upstairs, presumably asleep. The image on the screen was revolving wildly, but neither he nor Kate showed any inclination to adjust it. They’d just come out of a long embrace, an embrace that had begun with Kate’s lips drawn tightly together, then quickly escalated to all-out passion. Kate had pulled away first, as expected, but she continued to breathe heavily as she straightened her skirt.

  What Moodrow figured he could do, assuming he wanted to, was draw Kate Cohan into his bed. Despite Father Ryan’s penance, despite all the good-girl myths, despite her fear of her father, Kate’s body would get the better of her. He could seduce her and get her pregnant and that would be all she wrote.

  “Maybe we ought to talk about something else,” Kate said.

  “I don’t recall us talking at all.”

  She took his hand and squeezed it. “Stanley, what were you and Daddy fighting about? I heard him shouting.”

  What could he say? Your father’s pissed off because I’m trying to prove he covered up a murder?

  “I think his hair got messed up.”

  “Don’t be evasive, Stanley. Wh
at were you fighting about?”

  “I know you love your father, Kate, but you have to admit he has his faults.” He waited for her to nod in agreement. “And one of his faults is he thinks of you as a medal he’s giving out. If I want the medal, I have to earn it. Which basically means obeying him, even if what he wants has nothing to do with your welfare.”

  “Daddy’s just being protective. The way fathers are supposed to.”

  “But where does that leave me? I’m not a dog on the end of his leash. I have to live my own life. And after we get married, your life and mine are gonna be one and the same. The point I’m making is that sooner or later your old man has to let go.”

  What he wanted to do was bury his lips in her throat, to run the tips of his fingers over her body, to join their flesh until neither of them could tell where one body left off and the other began. But he didn’t do any of that. It was the wrong time and the wrong place and he knew it.

  “I suppose he does,” Kate said, “but I think it’ll come naturally. After we’re married. Daddy respects marriage.”

  “Yeah, well, I hope so. But there’s something else we have to get straight and that’s where we’re gonna live.” The issue had been bothering him ever since he’d realized they were going to have to survive on his salary. If they saved their pennies, they might someday be able to afford a home of their own, but that was going to be in the future. Way in the future. “Because the thing of it is that I’ve already got a two-bedroom rent-controlled apartment right now. For which I’m paying eighty dollars a month.”

  “But the neighborhood, Stanley. It’s falling apart.”

  “Look, I know the Lower East Side isn’t much. It never was. But half a million people live there and they mostly get along. What I want you to do is come to see me tomorrow. It’s Sunday so you oughta be able to get away. Let me take you around, show you what the neighborhood’s really like. If you still think you can’t live there, we’ll find some other place. But at least come and take a look.”

  Sixteen

  January 19

  The thing about Jake Leibowitz, Jake Leibowitz thought, is he never kids himself. He faces up to the crap reality throws at him is what he does. He deals with the bullshit.

  When Santo Silesi brought him the word that O’Neill and his bitch had to go, Jake’d seen it as a routine piece of business, as the price you pay for your mistakes. That routine had changed dramatically when he, Izzy and young Santo found 800 Pitt Street deserted. Jake had figured it out right away. The O’Neills were a link between Steppy Accacio and the electric chair: O’Neill to Jake to Faci to Accacio. That’s how it went. Take the O’Neills out and the chain breaks.

  But with O’Neill and his old lady most likely talking to the cops, the only sensible thing for Steppy Accacio to do was move up to the next link. Which happened to be Jake Leibowitz. Jake and his buddy, Izzy Stein.

  Well, Jake Leibowitz wasn’t going to run. Not from Accacio and not from the cops. And he wasn’t going to panic, either. He’d waited too long to get his piece of the action. What he’d do is watch his back at all times. Watch his back and wait for Santo Silesi to make a move.

  “Yoo-hoo, Jakey, are you decent?”

  Jake, staring at his reflection in the mirror, rolled his eyes. “Yeah, ma, c’mon in.”

  Sarah Leibowitz pranced into the room, her rotund body encased in the rattiest fur coat Jake had ever seen. “You like?” she asked, spinning around to give him the big view.

  “Great, ma. What kind of fur is it?”

  She threw him her darkest look. “A hundred percent fox. If you knew from fur, you wouldn’t ask.”

  “That’s what I was gonna say. Only I didn’t wanna look bad in case it was mink.”

  Ma Leibowitz sniffed. “So why are you dressed so fancy-pancy? You getting married?”

  “I gotta go out, ma.”

  He looked back at the mirror, at his beautiful gray suit. The suit he’d almost fought the salesman at Leighton’s to get. “Continental,” the salesman had insisted. “Continental is the fashion now.” Then he’d brought out a three-button jacket and a pair of trousers with a little buckle in the back. “I’d rather wear a fucking dress,” Jake had said. “What I want is double-breasted and no bullshit about it.” The suit he ended up buying was a compromise because even though it was double-breasted, it only had one button. Way at the bottom.

  “This is crap,” he’d told the salesman, but then he’d tried on the jacket, looked in the mirror and known right away. The damn thing draped his chest like a Roman toga. He looked like he’d just stepped off the cover of Esquire. “Do the cuffs. I’ll pick out some shirts while I’m waitin’.”

  Now, he never wanted to take the suit off. Even though his business this morning was routine. He was supposed to meet Santo Silesi in the projects on Houston Street and hand over the day’s supply of heroin. Dope was a seven-day-a-week business. Miss a day, even a Sunday, and your customers went somewhere else. Later, after Santo had his pockets full, Jake and Izzy were going to meet down at Katz’s Delicatessen for some breakfast and a strategy session. The strategy wasn’t hard to figure: locate O’Neill before it’s too late. Find him or get ready to fight. Jake wanted to know if Izzy had come to the same conclusion. Especially about the fighting part of it.

  Jake took his.45 from under the pillow and shoved it into his belt.

  “What’s with the gun?” Sarah Leibowitz asked.

  “You want fox, mind your own business.”

  “For me he has no respect,” Sarah moaned. “For me …”

  “Cut the crap, ma. I ain’t got the patience for it.”

  “Huh,” she sniffed. “You could at least straighten your tie.”

  He did straighten his tie. Then he left the bedroom. “I’ll be back when I’m back,” he said, shrugging into his black overcoat. “Don’t wait up.”

  It was cold outside, cold and windy, as usual. Jake held his hat with one hand as he walked along Avenue D It was like being in Kansas, in Leavenworth, Kansas, where the wind came across the prairie like a bullwhip in the hand of a sadistic hack. The only good thing about this winter of 1958 was that Santo Silesi had to spend hours every day standing in it.

  “I’ll bet the little prick has a face the color of Santa Claus’s costume,” Jake said to himself as he hurried along. “I’ll bet his face is so raw he screams when he shaves.”

  When he finally located Silesi in a park near the river, Jake’s first thought was, “Good, he’s got customers.” But as he moved a little closer, Jake realized that something was very wrong. Silesi was surrounded by five Puerto Rican kids wearing identical baseball jackets. Jake could see young Santo’s head swiveling as he tried to watch everyone at the same time. What it was, what it had to be, was a rip-off. Pure and simple.

  Jake pulled the.45 and laid it alongside his coat. Santo and the five kids were standing just off the path and Jake waited until he was abreast of the group, then turned, stepped forward and smashed the.45 into the nearest kid’s head. The kid dropped without so much as a groan.

  “Who’s talkin’ here?” Jake asked, looking from one kid to another. “Who’s the big shot?” He paused, allowing the barrel of the Colt to swing in a slow half-circle. “What’s the matter? Nobody got nothin’ to say? You a bunch of patos? You a bunch of faggots?”

  Their eyes were riveted to the.45. They couldn’t even think of anything else.

  “Somebody better wake the fuck up,” Jake said. “Because I ain’t gonna slap the next one.” He drew the hammer back.

  “I am the president,” a tall, slim kid announced.

  “That’s funny,” Jake said, pointing the.45 at the center of the kid’s chest, “you don’t look a bit like Dwight David Eisenhower. Not with all that greasy hair. Ike’s bald.”

  “I am president of the Tenth Street Dragons.”

  “Dragons? More like the Tenth Street Cucarachas.”

  “You have the gun, senor.”

  “Here, Santo,
take this.” Jake passed the.45 to Silesi, then took off his overcoat, folded it carefully and laid it on a bench. His hat followed, then his jacket. “Okay, El Presidente, let’s see what you got.”

  Jake could see the kid was scared. He was scared, but he couldn’t chicken out. Not with that macho attitude every Puerto Rican was supposed to have. He had to fight.

  “Ya know somethin’, kid? I was havin’ a very bad day. But since I met you, it’s picked up considerable.”

  The kid threw a slow clumsy left. Jake took it on the forehead, a nothing punch that made no impression whatsoever, then slammed his right hand into the kid’s face. He felt the kid’s nose flatten under his knuckles, watched him fall.

  “What’s the matter, El Presidente, you don’t wanna get up?” The kid didn’t want to get up. That was obvious. He was sitting on the frozen ground, holding one hand to his face, trying to shake off the dizzyness.

  “C’mon, don’t be a pussy.” Jake drove the toe of his fifty-dollar Bostonians into the kid’s ribs. That got him going. The kid rolled away, trying to get to his feet, but Jake moved with him, waiting for an opening. When he saw it, he kicked the kid again, this time right in the balls.

  “Guess the party’s over,” Jake said. “El Presidente musta ate somethin’ that didn’t agree with him. He’s pukin’ all over his sneakers. What I gotta say to the rest of you punks is that ya boss is lucky. He’s lucky he ain’t fuckin’ dead. Which is exactly what you’re gonna be if ya try this bullshit again. Look at yourselves. Wearin’ them stupid jackets and them sneakers in the middle of winter. Why don’t ya get a goddamned suit? A decent pair of shoes?” He paused for an answer, but nobody said a word. “Awright, pick up ya buddies and get your asses outta here. And don’t come back. Next spic that fucks with me is goin’ for a swim in the river.”

  Jake took the.45 from Santo, then waited in his shirtsleeves until the kids disappeared into the projects. What he was showing them was that he didn’t feel the cold, but what he was doing was freezing his ass off. The minute they were gone, he put on his jacket, overcoat and hat. Then he started walking.