“Greta has a lot in common with most of the women who live down here. Tough times, tough women.”
Kate looked up at Moodrow for a moment. Her gaze was sharply speculative. “I guess I’m learning, Stanley. My father retired today.”
“I didn’t know that.” Moodrow’s surprise was evident. “Did he say why?”
“He gave me a speech about how hard it was for the Irish when they first came here. And about how they’re losing what it took a hundred years to gain. ‘It’s not my Department anymore.’ That’s what he said. I didn’t believe him, so I came down here to find out for myself. It was stupid not to call first.”
“How did Greta happen to find you?”
“She was bringing you some food. Potato something. I didn’t understand her when she told me. She repeated it, but I still didn’t understand, so I let it drop.”
“Potato lathes. It means ‘pancakes.’ ”
“She makes pancakes out of potatoes?”
“Yeah. It just goes to prove there are things you can do with a potato besides boiling it. Being Irish, you wouldn’t know that.”
Kate giggled, then turned serious again. “I was a real sap, Stanley. I feel like a yokel who just bought the Brooklyn Bridge. Maybe I had some doubt when I got here, but after sitting in Greta’s kitchen all night, I know the truth.” She looked up at him. “You got sucked into this, didn’t you? It wasn’t something you wanted.”
“That’s for sure.” Moodrow shook his head slowly. He could feel the tension beginning to ease. Kate was leaning against his chest; his arm was around her shoulder. “But sometimes you have to do what’s right. Especially when Greta Bloom gets on your case. The job’s pretty corrupt, Kate. Most of the guys are on the take, especially the brass. I don’t wanna get too righteous about it, because as far as I can tell, it’s always been that way. But homicide is something else. I couldn’t let it go and neither could your father. It’s been a war zone down here ever since Luis Melenguez was murdered. Your father had a lot to do with that.”
“Well, he’s out of it, now.” She hesitated, letting her eyes drop to her lap. “I made a decision while I was sitting down at Greta’s. I decided not to ask you this question and now I’m asking it anyway. What are you going to do to my father?”
“Probably nothing. I don’t have the kind of evidence that can be used against your father in court and now that he’s retired, it can’t be used by the Department, either. That’s probably why he handed in his papers.” Moodrow slid his index finger beneath Kate’s chin and pulled her head up gently. “I never went after him. I never deliberately went after your father, but I had to protect myself. What I’m talking about is survival, before and after Luis Melenguez’s killer pays the price.”
Kate nodded. “Are you going to get him? The killer?”
“His name’s Jake Leibowitz and I’m right on top of him. It’s just a matter of time. The whole precinct’s after him. It seems that the Department brass, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that Jake Leibowitz must go. What they’re doing is protecting themselves. They say they’re protecting the Department, but it’s their own butts they’re worried about. I have to make them understand that they can best protect themselves by protecting me.”
“That’s going to be a neat trick.” Kate laid her hand on his knee and drew a rough circle with her fingertips. “Have you given any thought to what you’ll do with your life if you lose the Department?”
“None.”
“Have you given any thought to what you’ll do if you lose me?”
“That’s the $64,000 Question, isn’t it? Maybe I should have taken my shot ten minutes ago.”
“Is that because you think the answer isn’t something I want to hear?”
“It’s because the answer doesn’t make anybody happy, including me.” Moodrow abruptly stopped speaking. He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then turned back to Kate and drew a deep breath. “There are times in your life when you wake up for a moment and realize you’re a big dope. That you’ve been a dope for so long it’s as natural as combing your hair. That’s part of what it’s about. Somewhere along the line I decided that I wanted a gold shield. An ordinary badge wasn’t good enough. It had to be gold for a big shot like me.”
“It’s not wrong to want to get ahead, Stanley. It’s natural. It’s what everybody wants.”
“That’s just it. I decided to become a detective, because I didn’t want to be like everyone else. When I was in high school, all I could think about was becoming heavyweight champion of the world. I didn’t think about the price. Not for one minute. The same thing happened when I joined the Department. I didn’t give up the kid’s dream. No, I decided I wanted to be a detective and I used my face to get it. These last few weeks? Every time I look in the mirror and see the scars, I think about what a dope I was. Let me tell you something, Kate, the price wasn’t long in coming. Your father put me to work learning the price from day number one.”
Kate put a finger to his mouth. She was smiling. “I bet I know what happened next.”
“What?”
“Greta Bloom happened next.”
Moodrow leaned forward and kissed her lightly. “You get a gold star.”
Kate grabbed hold of his ear and held him in place while she explored his mouth with her own. “One star isn’t enough for an ambitious young lady like myself. I want the whole galaxy.”
“Are you sure, Kate?” What he wanted to do was run his finger down along her throat, to unbutton her blouse and press his head between her breasts. “My galaxy isn’t very big. It runs south to Canal Street and north to Fourteenth. It’s got the river on the east and the Bowery on the west. Like I said, it’s not very big, but it’s mine and I’m not gonna leave it. Not without a fight. See, the thing of it is I never meant for any of this to happen. Greta came up one morning and asked me to check on a homicide that’d happened while I was in training for the O’Grady fight. Her visit was step one in the process of learning that I was a dope and it was an innocent step. Nothing more than a favor for an old friend. After that, it just happened.”
Kate stood up abruptly. “I guess I could say the same thing about myself. Everything I value just happened. Everything the nuns told me; everything my father told me. I bought the whole package, all nine yards. Of course, I wanted you to get ahead. I wanted you to come out to Bayside, to leave the slums and … It was a joke and the joke was on me. I really believed that an ordinary detective could afford to live in Bayside. Why shouldn’t my father have a big house and a new car every two years? Why shouldn’t we put down new carpeting before the old carpeting wore out? You want a piano? Go out and buy it. A mahogany bedroom set? A finished basement? A vacation in Havana?”
“I get the point, Kate, but the question is what do you want to do about it?”
She answered by walking toward the bedroom. “What I want to do is change. Hell, Stanley, I already have changed. When I think about that jerk, Father Ryan, and his sadistic penance, and that I actually went through with it, I want to throw up. I’m twenty-two years old and I’m tired of being a little girl.”
It was late and, as in most New York tenements, the landlord wasn’t sending up much heat. They huddled together beneath the blankets and Moodrow, determined to go slowly, let his finger drift over Kate’s breasts, let them trail along the smooth, flat plane of her belly, let them caress the outside of her leg down to the knee, then crawl along the ribbon-smooth flesh of her inner thigh.
“Jesus, Kate,” he whispered. “I never dreamed this would happen again.”
Instead of answering, Kate swung up to straddle his hips. She leaned forward, the expression on her face at once determined and fierce. Holding him in her hand for a moment before sliding down to envelop him.
Moodrow’s decision to go slowly was lost in a moment, as was the entire decision-making process. Thinking about it later, he decided that what they’d done was fuck. That the act was purely physical, despite the fac
t that afterwards, his breath coming in long deep heaves, he could literally feel the bond between them as it tightened. Their union, he realized, had been more elemental than love. It might even be stronger, though he couldn’t be sure of that. Time would tell.
They hadn’t slept very much when Moodrow glanced over at the clock, noted that it was 6:10, and rolled out of bed. He looked down at Kate for a moment, then gently shook her.
“Kate, Kate.”
“Not again, Stanley,” she muttered. “I’m too old.”
Moodrow flipped on a bedside lamp and shook her more roughly. “It’s six o’clock, Kate, and I have to get ready to leave. What are you gonna do about work? You want me to set the alarm?”
Kate sat up and Moodrow found his eyes drawn to her breasts the way a shopkeeper’s eyes are drawn to the barrel of a shotgun. At that moment, her beauty was almost frightening. To lose her and gain her and then lose her again …
“I’ll have coffee with you before you go,” Kate said. “Just let me use the bathroom.”
“As soon as I finish.”
“Why should you go first?” Kate was smiling as she said it.
“Because I’m closer.”
Fifteen minutes later, Moodrow poured out two cups of steaming coffee, setting one in front of Kate and sipping at the other.
“We haven’t talked about what you want to do,” he said.
“I want to stay here,” Kate answered quickly. “If you’ll have me.”
“Well, I don’t know, Kate. It seems to me like I already had you.”
“You never change, Stanley.” Kate shook her head. “Thank God.”
“Actually, we’ve both changed. No matter what happens, neither of us can go back to your father. Not anymore. But that doesn’t put Jake Leibowitz behind bars, does it? I’ve gotta get going. You know how it is, right?”
“I’m a cop’s daughter, remember?”
Moodrow nodded solemnly. “All things considered, I don’t think I’m likely to forget. What time do you have to be at work?”
“I’m going to call in sick today. I may call in sick permanently.”
“Are you serious?”
Kate looked down at the table, her expression almost shy. “It’s too far away. I thought I might find something on the Lower East Side.”
“You sure you can live down here?”
“I don’t know if ‘sure’ is the right word for it, but I was talking to Greta last night and she offered to show me around the neighborhood. Let me ask you something, Stanley. Does Greta tell the truth? Some of her stories are pretty unbelievable.”
Moodrow walked around to Kate’s side of the table. “Well, I’ve never caught her in a lie.” He leaned over and kissed her on the lips, letting his hands slide down to cover her breasts, then abruptly stood up.
“Wait a minute, I just had an idea. I just had a great idea. Do me a favor, Kate. You tell Greta that I want to see her when I get back this afternoon. Tell her there’s something I need to talk to her about.”
“Stanley,” Kate said, grabbing onto both of his hands, “she’s harmless. She’s an old lady.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“I thought you were angry because she’s interfering in our lives.”
Moodrow giggled, then covered his mouth with his hand. “Even if I was sore about that, I wouldn’t waste my time trying to change her. Not Greta Bloom. I’d get better results waving a fan at a blizzard. No, I think I just came up with a way Greta can help me get to Jake Leibowitz. But don’t tell her that. Just ask her if she can take a few minutes out of her busy schedule to talk to me. I wanna figure out exactly what I’m gonna say before she hears about it. Capish?”
“Is that Yiddish?”
“No, it’s Italian. But it’s good to see you’re tryin’.”
Thirty-one
January 23
If you absolutely have to stand around outside, Moodrow thought as he took up a position on the north side of Houston Street near the East River, you couldn’t pick a better day, not in the winter in New York.
It was seven o’clock in the morning and the temperature was already in the forties. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky above the tenements to the west or the river to the east. The edge of a solid-gold sun was just visible over the factories and warehouses lining the Queens side of the river. Its sharply angled light sparkled on the red-brick facade of the nearly completed Baruch Houses across Houston Street. The Baruch Houses, when finished, were expected to provide a little over two thousand heavily subsidized apartments to as many worthy families. There was a fly in the proverbial ointment, however. According to the Daily News, the waiting list already held ten thousand names.
Moodrow was standing in front of another project, the Lillian Wald Houses, one of the known dealing addresses of Santo Silesi. It seemed as good a place to do random canvassing as anywhere else. He didn’t expect much to come of his efforts, but that didn’t mean he could allow himself to duck them. He held his badge in one hand and his quarry’s photo in the other, approaching residents as they came out of the doorway.
“Can I talk to you a minute? You know this guy?”
Most hurried past with a quick glance and a quicker shake of the head. A few stopped for a closer look. Fewer still were known to Moodrow, some from school and some from his days in the gym. They were friendlier, more willing to consider the problem, but one and all, they professed ignorance.
Whenever possible, Moodrow filed away the names and faces of those who tried to help. He’d always had a prodigious memory. That was why he’d done so well at St. Stephen’s where a premium was placed on the rote learning and eventual regurgitation of simple, unconnected facts. Moodrow fully intended to put that asset to work for him. Every detective in the NYPD had informants, but very few could count on ordinary citizens for a steady flow of information. Having grown up in the neighborhood, Moodrow knew from experience that Joe Citizen often lived cheek by jowl with some of the most vicious maggots on the Lower East Side. That, for instance, keeping your kids away from the bad apples usually made the difference between college and prison for the younger generation. If he could tap into their knowledge, gain their trust …
It was almost nine o’clock when a tall Spanish kid, his nose heavily bandaged, strolled through the project doorway. He wore the tightly pegged pants and the satin baseball jacket typical of teenage gang members. Moodrow approached him with caution.
“Excuse me, son.” He flipped his shield in the kid’s face. “You know this guy?”
The kid glanced at Moodrow’s badge, then at Jake Leibowitz’s photograph. He started to push by, muttering some proof of his impending manhood, then stopped in his tracks.
“You know this guy?” Moodrow repeated.
He looked up at Moodrow for a moment. “Si, I have seen this blanco. Selling decata. Say to me, Senor Policia, do you look for him to go to jail?”
“More like the electric chair.”
“You goin’ to catch him, Senor Policia?” The kid’s voice dripped sarcasm.
Moodrow stepped forward, allowing his face to lose all expression. “Dig the wax out of your ears, punk, because I’m only gonna say this once. I may be asking for your help, but that don’t mean I’m gonna take your shit. You keep running that smart mouth, you’re not gonna have to worry about whether you did your homework. My name is Detective Moodrow. I own the Lower East Side. Comprende?”
“I am no your stool pigeon, Detective Moodrow. No matter wha’ you own.”
“Take it easy. Whatta ya think, I picked you out special? I’ve been standing here for two hours and I’ve been talkin’ to everybody. Look, this guy has killed four people. I want him off the streets. What I think is that maybe you want him off the streets, too. If you know where he’s holed up and you tell me, I won’t forget it. I won’t forget it and I won’t ask why you told me.”
The kid took his time, mulling it over for a few minutes before responding. “Thees maricon, so
meone seen him on Henry Street.”
Henry Street was a half-mile and several hundred thousand people away from where Moodrow was standing.
“You looking for him, kid? You lookin’ for Mister Leibowitz?” Moodrow already knew the answer. He could feel it. Poor old Jake. The cops, the mob, the Tenth Street Dragons-was there anyone who didn’t want to kill him?
“Do me a big favor,” Moodrow continued. “If you find him first, leave his carcass in the street. You’ll be making life a lot easier for both of us.”
In his own way, Jake Leibowitz was also enjoying the January thaw. He was lying in a short alleyway between two tenements on Thompson Street in Greenwich Village. Lying next to half a dozen garbage cans, dressed in rags, sucking on a wine bottle filled with grape juice. He’d been lying there all night.
It wasn’t the way he wanted it, but Jake figured it was necessary. By this time Joe Faci must be staring over both shoulders and between his legs whenever he was on the street.
“The sap’s head must look like a fuckin’ pendulum,” Jake said out loud.
It was eight o’clock in the morning and the sidewalks were crowded. Several people looked over at the sound of his voice, but then quickly turned away, that special disgust reserved for terminal drunks evident on their faces. Jake raised the bottle to his lips and kissed the side of the closest garbage can.
“Fuck ’em,” he muttered. Ordinary citizens had never been more than prey to him and now that his own goose was cooked, they weren’t even that. They meant nothing; they were irrelevant. Like telephone poles or fire hydrants. Pure scenery.
What next? Jake asked himself. What next after I do the deed on Joe Faci?
Santo Silesi was his best guess. He hadn’t spoken to his mother in the last couple of days and knew nothing of Silesi’s execution or the intense police scrutiny that had followed it. What he figured was that he’d take care of Joe Faci, then go after Santo. That’d wipe the slate clean. Once young Santo was resting on a slab in the morgue, he’d be free to run. Assuming that was what he wanted to do. He didn’t know and he couldn’t worry about it. Why should he?
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