“What’s that smell? It smells like perfume. You wearin’ some kinda sweet aftershave?”
Cohan felt his face redden. He closed his eyes and silently counted to ten.
“Take it easy, Pat. Ya gettin’ ya pressure up. What’s the matter with you, tonight?”
How could he answer that one? My hair won’t stay put? I’m too old to handle the bullshit anymore? My only daughter’s future husband is a fucking fool?
“All right, Sal, why don’t we just get to it.” He sat behind his desk, opened the center drawer and took out a long fat cigar. The cigar was a gift from the Chief of Detectives, a handrolled Cuban import. He unwrapped it quickly, snipped off the end and lit it up.
Patero leaned forward in his seat. “I spoke to Accacio again, like you said. To get a better picture of what he wants from us. Pat, he ain’t askin’ for protection. What he says he needs is information. Like where the narcs are operatin’, their targets and like that. Accacio figures he can keep his boys out of trouble if he can see the trouble coming.”
“I suppose he expects us to hand over all the paper in the Narcotics Squad?”
“No way, Pat. Accacio ain’t stupid. He wants to operate along the East River, from Fourteenth Street down to the Brooklyn Bridge. All them projects? The ones already built and the ones goin’ up? The Housing Authority is fillin’ ’em with Puerto Rican welfare. Accacio figures it’s like a captive market. Between the welfare and the low-cost apartments, they’ll never move out. Every time one of them goes on dope, Accacio’s got a customer for life.”
Pat Cohan suddenly relaxed. He leaned back and tried, unsuccessfully, to run his fingers through his stiff white hair. “Sal, the public sees dope as worse than murder, worse than rape. We’re under tremendous pressure to do something about it. Think for a minute. Drugs are federal. The FBI goes after drugs. The FDA goes after drugs. Suppose the feds really turn up the heat. Suppose they put a hundred agents in Manhattan. Suppose they analyze our paperwork and discover that arrests for heroin are virtually non-existent in a certain section of the Seventh Precinct. Suppose …”
“Accacio understands that, Pat. He told me he didn’t care if we busted every junkie in his territory, because they come right back to the needle as soon as they get out of jail. He doesn’t care if we bust a few of his street dealers, either. All he wants is enough advance warning to keep the people close to him out of it.”
“That way he protects his dope, right? That way he makes sure we never seize enough to really hurt him.”
“Pat, we could do this all night. My problem is I don’t see an easy way out of it, short of committing suicide. We’re in too deep. If Accacio drops a dime on us? I don’t have to draw no pictures, do I?”
“Stop right there, Sal.” Cohan set his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. “Are you tellin’ me the little greaseball actually threatened us?”
Patero shook his head. “You know, it’s funny, Pat. You didn’t turn a hair at the idea of covering up a homicide. But now you’ve got your balls in an uproar because Accacio dared to challenge your authority. It sounds like you’ve got things all backwards.”
Pat Cohan ignored the jibe. “What you said before? About Accacio dropping a dime on us? Well, Sal, I’ve never met the man, have I?”
It was Patero’s turn to blush and Pat Cohan watched the process with satisfaction.
“We’re the cops, Sal, remember? There’s twenty-four thousand of us. Prostitution? Gambling? The last I heard, they were called vices. And we own the Vice Squad. What we could do, if we wanted to, is hit every one of Accacio’s outlets on the same night. Teach the wop a lesson. If we wanted to.”
“He could still give my name to Internal Affairs.”
“Nobody cares about the pad, Sal. The pad is clean. Plus, the one thing we are in the Department is loyal. If Steppy Accacio breaks the faith, I’ll see to it that he never operates in New York City, again. Never.”
“I appreciate that.” Patero, much to his surprise, felt a wave of emotion roll over him. It took him a moment, but he finally recognized the emotion as pride, not gratitude. He was proud of an NYPD that protected its own, proud of a Pat Cohan who put loyalty before everything else, proud of himself for being part of the process. “I mean it, Pat. It makes a difference.”
Pat Cohan cleared his throat and looked down at his hands. “Meanwhile, we haven’t been threatened. All it is, when you think about it, is a simple request. So, let’s consider it. How much are we talking about here?”
“Right now, we’re gettin’ a grand a month out of Accacio. Six hundred for you, four hundred for me. We help him out and he’ll double that, for starters.”
“Can we do it? Assuming we want to do it. The Narcotics Squad is pretty clean. If anyone’s taking, they’re keeping it to themselves.”
“Pat, I’m a Boy Scout. I come prepared. Ya know Wolf? The Jew in Safes and Lofts? Well, he’s in my pocket. Been there for more than a year, so I know he ain’t gonna fold. What I wanna do is transfer him over to Narcotics. Nobody’ll think twice, because I been under pressure to beef up Narcotics, anyway. Wolf’ll be my ears inside the squad. Accacio says all he wants is information, so information is what we’ll give him.”
Pat Cohan relit his cigar. “The thing is we can’t stop it. I mean the dope. Maybe if we’d started right after the war, when it was still small, we could’ve done something, but now it’s out of control.”
“For once, I gotta agree.” Patero sat up in the chair and crossed his legs. “The only thing we can do is regulate it.”
“Tell ya what, Sal. You go see Accacio tonight. Tell him we accept his offer, but it’ll take some time to set things up. Which it will, of course. Just make sure you tell him we’re expecting the first payment now. That’ll give us a month to make up our minds.”
They were silent for a moment, their silence constituting a kind of agreement. Pat Cohan, satisfied with his decision, let his thoughts wander lightly over his possessions—his home, his numerous bank accounts, his sad, sick wife, his only daughter. They finally came to rest on what had been bothering him all along. Stanley Moodrow.
“Let’s talk about Stanley for a moment,” he said.
Patero sighed, shrugging his shoulders. “I already clued you in, Pat. Stanley’s not a bad kid, but these things we’re doin’ ain’t right for him. And it ain’t his fault. It’s yours. You rushed him along too fast.”
“But he hasn’t actually refused to cooperate?”
“Do I have to go through it again? I gave Stanley a list of burglaries. I told him to include all of them in Zayas’s confession. He didn’t do it. Detectives, third grade, are not allowed to make their own decisions. It’s that simple. Plus, even if he did go along on the collections, I could see he didn’t like it. He asked to be put in one of the squads. Pat, I know you got a special interest here, but I ain’t got the time to be your future son-in-law’s psychiatrist. Either straighten him out or get Kathleen to find another boyfriend. Meanwhile, there’s somethin’ I ain’t told ya, somethin’ I didn’t wanna talk about over the phone.”
Pat Cohan sighed. “I can’t wait to hear it.”
“Ya remember the spic who got iced on Pitt Street? In the whorehouse?”
“I’m not senile. Yet.”
“Well, Stanley asked me about him this afternoon.”
Cohan’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. He rejected his first thought, that Stanley Moodrow was one of the headhunters from Internal Affairs, because it was too gruesome to contemplate.
“It ain’t what ya thinkin’,” Sal continued. “The spic, Melenguez, was a friend of one of Stanley’s neighbors. All Stanley wants to know is how it happened and where the investigation’s goin’. I told him I’d check on it and get back to him.”
“This is what happens,” Cohan grunted, “when you put a cop in his home precinct. Cases become personal. It destroys perspective.”
“The perspective here is that we’re not doin’ shit to find th
e perpetrator. The perspective is that even if we don’t know who the shooter is, we know who sent him. Now, whatta ya wanna tell Stanley?”
Pat Cohan took his time thinking it over. He re-lit his cigar, then blew on the ash until it glowed. “The first thing we better do is take it out of the precinct. Kick it up to the Organized Crime Task Force. They’ve already got a backload of mob killings that’ll keep them busy for the next five years. I expect to see Stanley tonight. I’ll tell him the spic was a pimp and we think his killing was mob-related, part of a turf war.”
“Sounds okay.” Patero glanced down at his watch. “Jeez, it’s almost nine o’clock. I ain’t laid eyes on my kids in two days. Lemme get the hell out of here. Maybe I’ll be home before they go to bed.”
Pat Cohan left his desk as soon as the door shut behind Sal Patero. He walked across the room, to a small table near the window, and sat down. A half-finished jigsaw puzzle lay on the table and he began to pick up individual pieces and fit them into an apple tree in the right hand corner of the puzzle. With his hands busy, his mind was free to consider his daughter’s boyfriend.
That’s the way he wanted to think of Stanley Moodrow—as a boyfriend, an unsuitable suitor, not as Kathleen’s fiancé. Cohan had been aware of Moodrow’s independent streak all along. Aware of it as a potential problem, especially if Stanley had a conscience to go along with it. Now the chickens were coming home to roost. Or, better still, the fox was in the chicken coop.
Like any good farmer, Cohan understood that the fox had to go. One way or the other. Unfortunately, the chicken, in this case, couldn’t be replaced by a fertilized egg. He thought, briefly, about living alone in his fine big house. Alone except for his crazy wife. He was fifty-nine years old. Retirement was coming, whether he liked it or not. He’d been counting on Kathleen and the grandchildren she’d give him to make that retirement bearable. If he forced her to choose between himself and Stanley Moodrow, there was always the possibility she’d choose Moodrow. He, Pat Cohan, was far too close to the situation to make an accurate judgment.
What he needed to do, he decided, was to move slowly. Wait for Moodrow to fall on his face. The kid was headstrong, stubborn. Sooner or later, like any other beginner, he’d make a mistake. And when he did, Pat Cohan would be standing there, shotgun in hand, like any good farmer with a fox in the coop.
Ten minutes later, when Moodrow knocked on the door, Pat Cohan was ready.
“It’s not locked,” he called, moving back to his desk.
“Evening, Pat.”
“Ah, Stanley. Yer lookin’ good, son. Swelling’s gone down. Bruises almost gone. Lookin’ good, all right.” He fumbled in his desk drawer. “Have a cigar?”
“No thanks, Pat. You know I don’t smoke.”
“Well, boyo, now that your fightin’ days are in the past, it might be time to cultivate a few healthy vices.”
“Maybe you’re right, but I don’t think I wanna begin at the top.” He nodded toward the cigar. “One of these days, maybe I’ll start with a cigarette and work my way up.”
Pat Cohan chuckled appreciatively. He swiveled his chair away from the desk, opened a cabinet built into the bookcase behind him, and fetched a bottle of Bushmill’s and two glasses. “Perhaps I might interest you in a different vice.”
“Sure, Pat, that’d be great.”
Cohan filled the two glasses halfway, then handed one to Moodrow. “Down the hatch, boyo.”
Moodrow managed not to choke, despite the fire that raged in his throat. “Damn,” he said, “I’m not used to this.”
Pat Cohan allowed himself to chuckle sympathetically, then straightened in his chair. “I’m afraid we have something serious to discuss, Stanley. Something unpleasant.”
“This I already figured out.”
“Sal Patero’s complaining. He says you’re not cooperating. He says you don’t care for what you’re doing.”
Moodrow sat back in his chair, looking for the right words, the words that would get his message across without offending Pat Cohan. He, too, had given the matter a lot of thought and he, too, was unsure of what Kathleen would do if forced to choose between her father and her lover.
“The first thing is that what Sal’s got me doing came as a complete surprise. I know you’re only trying to look out for me and Kathleen. I got no problem with that. But I gotta admit that I would’ve liked to work my way up. The other guys in the squad hate my guts and I always got along with everybody.”
“Stanley, if ya want to get ahead, you can’t worry about what some …”
“Let me finish, Pat. Before the lecture.” The whiskey was rapidly going to Moodrow’s head. Its main effect, at that moment, was fearlessness. “I went along with the collections, with the pad. I can live with that, because it’s been goin’ on for a long time. Also, the thing Sal’s got me doing with the DA’s office, the paperwork and that, is also acceptable. I’d rather be conducting investigations, but I understand that I’m doing something important. What bothers me is what he asked me to do with the kid, Zayas. I won’t put these heavy beefs on some punk kid’s head. It’s not right.”
Pat Cohan started to interrupt, but Moodrow waved him off, again. “Everything Zayas did, all those burglaries, don’t add up to a thousand dollars. Zayas is nothing but an amateur who’s small enough to get through a ventilation duct. I can’t go along with making him into a major criminal.”
“Is it my turn, now?” Cohan waited for Moodrow to nod, then continued. “It’s a question of loyalty here, boyo. Not loyalty to me or to Sal Patero. We’re talkin’ about loyalty to the Department, to the tradition. The public doesn’t give two figs for our problems. All the public wants is results. You really can’t blame them. Between the papers and the TV, they’re scared to death. I’m tellin’ ya, Stanley, your average good citizen sees a mugger on every corner. They see rapists under their beds. Murderers in the closet.”
Cohan took a minute to suck on his cigar. “There’s no way to educate the public, boyo. There’s no way to show them how things really work. Yet, we have to protect the Department from its enemies. Think about it, Stanley. Every time we turn around, we’re being attacked by some nigger-loving politician out to pick up a few votes. We have to protect ourselves.” Cohan sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I don’t wanna turn this into a book, Stanley, because the answer is simple enough. We protect ourselves with statistics. As long as our bullshit statistics compare favorably with the bullshit statistics coming out of other cities, nobody can fault us. Now, it’s true, boyo, some of the things we do to protect the Department aren’t particularly pleasant. But those of us who’ve been in the game for a long time understand that our first loyalty is to the NYPD, not to some spic from the Lower East Side. And let me tell you one more thing, Stanley. A cop who fails to exhibit that loyalty, can’t move up the ladder. I don’t care if he’s got the mayor for a rabbi.”
“You have a point there, Pat, but I’m not gonna do it, anyway.” Moodrow, to his surprise, answered without hesitation. “The bad guys are the bad guys. They have to pay for their crimes, even if it means doing what O’Brien and Mitkowski did to Zayas. But I’m not gonna frame some poor schmuck. If that means I never get above detective, third grade, then so be it.”
Pat Cohan refilled his glass, then offered the bottle to Moodrow. “Have another, Stanley.”
“No thanks, Pat. I’m still recovering from the first one.”
“I know this is delicate, boyo.” Cohan sipped at his drink, taking his time. “And the last thing I want to be is the interfering father-in-law. But, you know, Kathleen’s my only child.” He took another sip of the Bushmill’s, swishing it over his tongue before swallowing. “The question I keep asking myself is whether Kathleen can take life on the Lower East Side. Everything looks so easy, when you’re young, but …”
“I already got the lecture from Sal. Kathleen and I are gonna have to take our chances. Like every other couple startin’ out. With both of us working, there’
s no reason why we have to live on the Lower East Side. That’s even if you knock me off the pad, which I don’t think you’re gonna do.”
“Damn it, I don’t want my daughter working after she’s married.” Pat Cohan finally lost his temper. “I didn’t want her to work before she got married.”
“You trying to say she wouldn’t listen to you?”
Cohan felt his face begin to redden. He couldn’t believe this detective, third grade—who, by all rights, should still be walking a beat—had the gall to challenge him. Then he reminded himself that he’d already decided to dump Stanley Moodrow. “There’s no sense in pursuing this, is there?”
“Pat, it’s not like I’m talkin’ about goin’ to the press. Or Internal Affairs. I’m satisfied with what I’m doing. It’s just that I’m not willing to send the Playtex Burglar upstate for the next five years to make New York’s statistics better than Chicago’s.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Cohan let his fingers drift up to his stiff hair. “I’ll calm Patero down. In fact, I’ll beat Patero down, if I have to. You try to cooperate every way you can.”
“No problem.”
“Good, now there’s one other thing. Sal told me you were asking after a stiff named Melenguez.”
It was Moodrow’s turn to blush. “This is embarrassing.” He took a deep breath and launched into it. “I’ve got this neighbor. Greta Bloom. Used to be my mom’s best friend. Greta’s the kind of woman who sticks her nose any place it’ll fit. I’m sure you know what I mean. Anyway, it turns out that Melenguez used to room with another neighbor, Rosaura Pastoral. Rosaura is also Greta’s friend, so when Rosaura went to Greta, Greta came to me. She thinks I’m Dick Tracy or something. Anyway, I promised Greta I’d ask about Melenguez. It’s one of those things you can’t get out of. Like goin’ to the dentist.”
“Ya know, boyo, for a minute there, you had me worried. I was afraid you were close to this Melenguez. Now, as far as we can tell, Melenguez was a working pimp. From the way it went down, we’re sure it was a contract killing. The case is in the process of being kicked out to boro-wide Homicide and Organized Crime. They’ll share the information and work on it from different angles. It’s funny, in a way. These little greasers come over here and start committing crimes before they put down their suitcases. Welfare isn’t good enough for ’em. We do everything we can do to make their lives easy and this is how they reward us.”
A Piece of the Action Page 12
