“Now here.” She passed several pages across to Moodrow. “My caseworker, Judy Cohen, finally got a psychologist from Social Services to examine Levander. That’s a copy of his report that I just gave you. It says right there that Levander needs help. It says that Levander is likely to act out. It says that he will hurt people unless someone helps him.”
“Know what they did to help my brother, Moodrow?” Marlee’s voice was sharp with contempt. “The pigs talked us into sending him to the state school on Staten Island. Willowbrook. The pigs didn’t tell us they were going to drug him until he pissed all over himself. Until he didn’t even know who we were. The pigs didn’t tell us nothin’ and it took us nine months to get him out of there.”
“How many requests could I make?” Mrs. Greenwood asked quietly. “I could understand it if they didn’t know about Levander, but I started telling them when he was five years old.” She stopped abruptly, then took a deep breath. “If I had money, the doctors would have jumped all over themselves trying to help Levander with his problem, but I was poor. I was a poor black woman without a husband. Sergeant Moodrow, I don’t want you to kill my son. I want you to try not to kill Levander. If you promise, I’ll help you find him.”
Moodrow straightened up immediately. The idea of a deal, information for a promise, was a lot easier than handling a straight plea for mercy. “I can’t make a promise for all the cops in the city. I’m not Superman.”
“Just make it for yourself. If you’re there and if he lets you, you won’t kill him. I know you’ll keep to it, if you promise me.”
“And how many other people will he hurt? Do you think because he’s in jail, he won’t be able to hurt anyone?”
She stared at Moodrow, collecting her thoughts. By that time, she was barely whispering. But she was still determined. She had made the decision to save her child and she wouldn’t give up until Moodrow walked out of the apartment. “It just doesn’t seem right to me. They should have helped him when he was a little boy, but they let him grow up wild. They knew about it and they allowed it to happen. Now they want to shoot him down. If he’s alive, he could be saved. It’s possible. Jesus could save him. If he dies, he’ll be in hell forever.” Her voice dropped off momentarily. Then she picked it up again. “I don’t want them to kill my child.”
This time Moodrow didn’t allow any gaps, but when he spoke his voice had a strange urgency. “Yeah, sure. I won’t kill him. All right? I promise that I won’t commit a homicide, namely premeditated murder, on Levander Greenwood. But I’m not saying I’ll take any risks for him and I’m not speaking for anyone but myself.”
“He don’t mean it, Mama. He’s just another damn liar.…”
“Shut up, Marlee,” Moodrow snapped. He didn’t bother to look at her. “I’m even saying I’ll try to fix it so he has a chance to surrender. I don’t know if I can do it, but I’ll try. Understand that when we go to take Levander, there’ll probably be a lot of other cops there and I won’t be in charge. Not even close, but I’ll try to set it up so he can surrender. Also, if he gets in touch with you and he wants to give up, talk to me first and I’ll take him into the stationhouse. Understand? First. Nobody else. Now what’s this earthshaking information?”
Louise Greenwood smiled then. Satisfied with the results of her efforts. At no time did she try to include Tilley in the deal, which was just as well. With a man like Levander Greenwood, Tilley reasoned, if you hesitate at a crucial moment, you might as well put your own gun in your own mouth and pull the trigger.
“I said I’d help you, Sergeant. I didn’t say I knew where he was.” She continued to smile. “But I do know he’s been to see Rose. He’s been to see his wife and his children.”
“Mama,” Marlee said angrily, “Rosey’s gonna be furious when she hears about this.”
“Rose told me to mention it, Marlee. She said if Sergeant Moodrow came by I was to say she wanted to see him as soon as possible.”
“So you sold me information that you were told to give me for nothing?” Moodrow, despite the challenge, spoke evenly.
“I don’t recall Rose putting a price on it,” Louise Greenwood countered.
“And if I walked out without promising, you wouldn’t have said that Rose was looking for me?”
She dealt with his logic by ignoring it. “Levander was there last week. He’s very hard with her.”
“When was the last time you heard from him?”
“We haven’t seen him in over a year. There’s nothing here for him, now. And I don’t know anyone who knows him. I work full time and most nights I go down to the church and help out. That’s not exactly Levander’s style.”
“Does he visit Rose often?”
“Ask her that question yourself, Sergeant. I spoke to her while you argued with Marlee at the door. I told her you’d be over to see her.”
5
THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE project where Louise Greenwood lived with her daughter, Marlee, and the tenement that housed Rose Carillo was sharp and clear, even from out on the street. In an effort to avoid the expense of repointing the brick, the landlord had painted the building a dark, heavy red, a red the color of arterial blood. Now it was flaking so badly the five-story tenement looked like it had psoriasis. Shards of thick black paint projected from the wooden windowframes like razor blades. The frames themselves were obviously swollen and the lintels above them broken off. Several apartments on the second and third floors were empty, their windows covered with sheets of un-painted plywood. Scorch marks on the brick announced the occurrence of one of the most dreaded events in a New Yorker’s life—a burn-out.
As they walked quickly up the front steps, Jim Tilley threw his partner a disgusted look. The whole scene—the heat, the filth, the raw poverty, offended him. The lobby was no better than the exterior. The door lock was missing, the mailboxes wide open, the ammonia reek of urine so sharp it pinched his nostrils. On the way up the stairs, his foot crunched hard on some object. Instinctively, he jerked his leg away and glanced down, expecting to find an old chicken bone, perhaps a piece of broken glass. Instead, he found a two inch water bug, its body crushed, its antennae still frantically tasting the world.
The inevitable question, popping off in his head like grease spattering on a grill, was “how can people live like this?” Despite a year in the poverty of Fort Greene, he found himself asking it whenever he entered a slum like this one. First he would ask the question, then imagine himself at the head of an army of tenants, all armed with tools, restoring the building to a glory it never had…in spite of the fact that he knew the tenants had no money and the landlord, who dreamed only of the day he could tear the place down, build condos and retire to Bermuda, was as unlikely to supply the necessary capital as Jim Tilley was to go to heaven.
“Look, Jim.” Moodrow stopped him on the third floor landing. “Let me do the talking this time, all right? I know Rose Carillo and you won’t get anything out of her with threats.”
Unused to apologizing, Tilley replied in a whisper. “Listen, I feel sorry for the old lady, right? But how could I know from Marlee what her mother would be like?”
“What you need to do,” Moodrow turned to face him, “you need to relax until you get so you do know. Most of the folks in the 7th hate the scumbags as much as we do, but they don’t trust us worth a shit, either. And the reason they don’t trust us is most cops never learn to tell the citizens from the criminals. For most cops it’s all from the ‘darkie’ side of the force. If that’s as far as you can see into this world, you won’t never amount to anything as a cop. Not really.” He slowly scratched the thin strip of hair over his right ear, a habit he had when he needed time to think. “Ya know, one of the reasons I picked you out was your evaluations. They said you were ‘eager’ for action. I like that word. Eager. I didn’t wanna get stuck with a twenty-five-year-old hairbag. I wanted you ta have balls, okay? But not basketballs. Like you don’t bounce ’em up and down on concrete. Ya gotta have balls with bra
ins.
“Anyway, I want you to take a step back with Rose. She’s tough as nails and if she don’t want to tell us something, we’ll never get it by threatening her.” His expression was earnest, almost worried, as if he were responsible for his partner’s big mouth.
Looking into his small, black eyes, Tilley swallowed hard. “Don’t worry about it. I may be a slow learner, but I’m not retarded.”
“Sounds like you’re describing Levander Greenwood.”
“C’mon, man.”
Moodrow just laughed. “Don’t worry about it, Jimmy.” He waited for a response, but Tilley couldn’t think of anything to say. Then Moodrow put a hand on his partner’s shoulder, a hand that weighed about ten pounds. “One thing you need to understand, though. No matter what I say to Louise Greenwood or to Rose, my first aim is to get Levander Greenwood off the street. If there was no other way, I’d use your method. I wouldn’t hesitate.”
Tilley shrugged, then brought his attention back to Rose Carillo. He didn’t know what to expect from Greenwood’s ex-wife. The name sounded Italian, but she was from West Virginia somewhere and had been married to a black man. All the images contradicted themselves and left him utterly unprepared for the model-perfect white beauty who opened the door. She was small and quick, perhaps a little too bony in the shoulders, with a sharp nose and sharper chin, full lips and deep creases in her cheeks when she smiled. Her hair was raven-black and so glossy it shimmered as if freshly oiled. It fell over her shoulders, in front, to the tops of her breasts.
“Hello, Moodrow.” Her dark eyes flicked from Tilley to Moodrow to the landing and the stairs. Only then did she step back to let the two cops in. “Why don’t you go on down to the living room and get comfortable? I’ll be there in a second. You want something to drink?”
“What have you got?” Moodrow asked.
“I have scotch and Jim Beam and Coors. And I got vodka in the freezer I could mix with just a trace of cranberry extract. Get ripped and dissolve your kidneystones, all at the same time.”
“I’ll take the bourbon. Neat, okay?”
“How ’bout your friend?”
“Oh yeah, sorry. This is Jim Tilley. He’s my new partner.”
“Yeah? For real? You really have a partner?”
“Why not?”
She came back, looking bemused, and gave the young cop a closer inspection. “Well, good luck, Jim Tilley. What’ll you have to drink?”
“Do you have something without alcohol?” He could feel the heat of her body across the room, despite her neutral expression and a matter-of-fact voice with just the trace of a southern question mark at the end of each sentence.
“With two kids?” Her smile was natural, easy. “Orange juice. Milk. Those’re the big two. And cranberry-grape for when Lee’s feeling adventurous.”
He smiled, then found his lips were glued to it. “Orange juice. I’m feeling kind of tame at the moment.”
All at once, the front door slammed open and the sound of shouting filled the hallway, followed by running feet and two light-brown children, obviously brother and sister. When they saw the cops sitting in their living room, they skidded to a halt and their eyes grew big. They knew that men in suits usually meant serious trouble and they turned to look at their mother questioningly.
“You know Sergeant Moodrow, don’t you?” She waited a second for their memories to click in. “So, what do you say?”
“Hello, Sergeant Moodrow.” They looked to be about a year apart, the oldest, the boy, around seven. As they stared up at the two cops, suspicion (not awe or even curiosity) was evident in their gaze. No surprise in a neighborhood that sucks out innocence like a junkie sucks the sugar out of a candy bar.
“And this is Detective Tilley. He’s Sergeant Moodrow’s partner.” She nodded at Tilley. “The boy’s Lee and the girl’s Jeanette.”
“Hello, kids,” Tilley said lamely.
Nothing. A blank stare. Four large, dark eyes boring into his. At first it was funny, then annoying. Then he just wanted to backhand them into another room. Fortunately, Rose, returning with the drinks, bailed him out. “I want you kids to go upstairs and stay with Estelle for a while.”
“How long?” Jeanette demanded. “I’m hungry.”
“You just go do it, missy. I’ll be along when I’m through talking to these gentlemen. Estelle’s expecting you, but if you see anyone else, you’re not to mention that policemen came to this house.”
They turned and left without speaking. As Jim Tilley watched their backs retreat down the hallway, he suddenly guessed the reason for their hostility. The two cops were the bringers of bad tidings. No good would come from their visit.
“Moodrow, can I speak in front of your friend? No offense, Detective Tilley.”
“You can speak about anything, but our secret sex life,” Moodrow returned cheerfully.
“I’m serious, Moodrow.” She turned away from the closed door at the end of the hallway to meet his eyes. “You, I trust. But I don’t know your friend.”
Moodrow sat up in his chair, surprised to be getting down to business so quickly. “Tilley’s my partner. For better or for worse. And, by the way, if you’re gonna ask me serious questions, next time don’t start the conversation off with three ounces of bourbon.”
She smiled. When Moodrow was in a good mood, he was hard to resist. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “I’ll just pour the rest down the sink.”
Moodrow’s eyes opened wide. He grabbed the glass and held it away from her, like a parent teasing a child with a toy. “This is not the way to ask a favor,” he said flatly. He drained the half inch in the bottom of the glass, then handed it to her. “Why don’t you do that again, before we get down to work.”
As soon as she disappeared, Tilley turned to his partner. “Do you know what you’re risking when you drink on duty with a civilian? There are headhunters that’d eat you alive for that.”
“I’m not risking a fucking thing,” Moodrow replied. “I’ve been a cop for thirty-five years. What can they do? Make me retire? But you, you’re being smart. You don’t know Rose from shit and you got your whole career ahead of you. No good reason why you should take a chance. By the way, I really like this woman. You ever see that John Wayne movie? True Grit? Where he says about this kid, ‘By God, she reminds me of me?’”
Rose Carillo came back into the room, cutting off any response. Enveloped by Moodrow’s praise, her beauty struck Tilley again, as if it was something she pushed ahead of her whenever she entered a room. She was wearing a plain, white skirt and a white blouse, both made of some artificial fabric. A uniform, as it turned out, required by her doctor employer. The dress was old, the material soft; she had no slip underneath and the folds of the dress had more or less molded themselves to her legs. As she walked toward them, a glass of bourbon in one hand, orange juice in the other, Tilley had a hard time pulling his eyes from the point where legs and belly came together. He wondered, at the time, if she noticed it. Later he found out she could see him coming a mile away.
“What was I doing when you first met me, Moodrow? How long ago was it?” Her voice was much quieter.
“I think it was just before Lee was born,” Moodrow replied, sipping his drink. “You were living with your mother-in-law in the projects. I was after Levander for ripping off some kids.”
“So you don’t really know what I did before that?”
“Actually, I don’t.”
“Wanna hear it? My life story?”
“Do I have to?”
“Yeah, you gotta.” She crossed her left leg over her right, absentmindedly tugging the hem of her skirt down over her knee. “I grew up in Augusta, West Virginia, with my parents and one of my father’s brothers. It was a small railroad depot for the coal miners and we were the only Italians in the town. My mother never learned English and my father spoke only enough to describe carburetors that needed rebuilding and batteries that needed to be replaced. He beat me, my father, for all of
my life. He beat me and my mother, beat us without anger, and he did it in front of his younger brother, carefully explaining why this was a necessary part of the care and treatment of women.
“My mother died when I was twelve years old and I got my period a week later. For a long time I thought the two events were related. My father, who always drank wine, took to whiskey and staying in the bars until they closed. His brother, Uncle Dominick, did his drinking at home. He began, secretly, to touch my breasts while I was working in the kitchen or cleaning his room.
“‘Rosey, you come inna here and clean up dissa spill. You Uncle Dominick make a big mess.’
“First my breasts, then lower, then naked on the bed; sweating over me, grunting, slobbering.” Her eyes never left Moodrow’s; her voice was even, as though she was describing a case history in a psychology class.
“I left home at fifteen. Stole three hundred dollars from a sock in my father’s drawer and got on a bus for New York. There’s no way to explain what it feels like to be a fifteen-year-old girl arriving at the Port Authority bus terminal. It seemed like there were more people in that building than in the whole state of West Virginia. Suddenly the toughness dissolves and the real questions—shelter, clothing, food, income—pour in.
“I drifted among the homeward-bound commuters and the alkies from the welfare hotels and the rip-off artists and the pimps, like a stick drifting down a river. I had done it. I’d gotten all the way to New York City and I had no idea what to do next. Believe it or not, with two hundred and fifty dollars in my purse, I was thinking of going to a hotel. In New York, two fifty would last about a day and a half.”
Force of Nature Page 5
