Force of Nature

by Stephen Solomita

  “You’re blowing your lines again. You were supposed to say, ‘You rang, sir?’”

  Piiiinnnnnggggg. Piiiinnnnnggggg. Ten times on the first of eight or nine bikes parked in the lot, until the door opened and Satan’s Gentlemen appeared at the bottom of the steps, about six feet away from Jim Tilley.

  To his everlasting credit, Tilley didn’t pursue the question of violence any further than the absolute conviction that their aim was to break his bones. He took one step forward and swung the bat at the lead head, giving it his best power-hitting first-baseman homerun swing. The head ducked back into the doorway, as he’d hoped, and the bat crashed into the edge of the brick framing the steps, sending a shower of brick dust into the face of the man he’d swung at.

  Before he could raise the bat again, Satan’s Gentlemen withdrew into their headquarters. Up to this point, they’d been clearly out-crazied. Now that they knew they couldn’t bluff or subdue Moodrow and Tilley without getting their own heads split open, they had to acknowledge a second problem—if they attacked Moodrow and Tilley, what jury would believe that they, the cops, had deliberately challenged the whole gang? As Tilley read it, there didn’t seem to be a hell of an upside for Satan’s Gentlemen anywhere in the encounter and he suspected they were inside considering this fact.

  Meanwhile, Moodrow was methodically destroying motorcycles. The unbreakable aluminum bat, though it was twisted and bent, rang out with each blow and the sheet metal and fiberglass dented and cracked and split. He was on his third bike, when a voice, shouting so as to be heard above the sounds of destruction, threatened them from the second floor window.

  “Stop it, ya motherfucker. Stop it or I’m gonna blow your eyeballs outta ya fuckin’ head.” There was no face behind the voice. Just the command.

  “You gonna kill me, asshole?” Moodrow didn’t pause. “You ain’t got the balls.” He whipped the bat sidearm into the windshield of an enormous red Yamaha, sending pieces of clear plastic sailing across the yard. “If you were gonna shoot me you woulda done it when I busted you four years ago. Or at least when you got outta the joint.” Very deliberately, like a bear trying to pray, he dropped to his knee and began to jam the bat handle into the polished spokes.

  “Well, what the fuck do ya want? What the fuck are ya doin’ this for, Moodrow?”

  Moodrow, obviously winded, turned toward the house for the first time. He looked over at Tilley and said, “It’s good to be recognized. It makes you feel warm all over.” To the voice behind the window, he said, “Peter Katjcic. I wanna talk to him.”

  “Why didn’t ya just say that? Are ya fuckin’ crazy? You got a fuckin’ disease?”

  Moodrow wheeled around, whipping the bat into the chain drive of an especially ostentatious Yamaha. This one had chrome fenders and a blood-dripping swastika painted over a nude, chained blonde on the gas tank. “Peter Katjcic, Gunther.” He was working harder now, the muscles on his neck and shoulders humping up beneath the skin.

  “Do ya see Katjcic’s bike here, Moodrow? Didja even look for his fuckin’ bike?”

  Piiiiinnnnnggggg.

  “I can’t make him here if he’s not here. What do I look like, the Blessed fuckin’ Virgin?”

  Piiiiinnnnnggggg. Crash. A beautiful shot. Downward at a slight angle, clearing the handlebars and smashing the complex of instruments along with the stereo and the CB. Suddenly Tilley felt much better. He knew the men in that house were armed. He knew they were capable of tremendous violence. But they were not the outlaws of twenty years ago who would fight out of principle. They were dealers, money-men, and they would think twice before giving two cops a reason to enter and search their place of business. Besides, all of a sudden Jim Tilley didn’t give a shit. He kept thinking about Levander Greenwood jamming Jeanette’s hand into a steaming tub. Of Louise Greenwood sitting in a welfare office, begging for help. Of shotgunned bodies alongside the Williamsburg Bridge. It was too crazy to sort out, but the result was simple: he just didn’t give a shit.

  “Fa Christ sake, Moodrow, that’s my fuckin’ bike.”

  Piiiiinnnnnggggg.

  “I’ll kill ya. I swear it.”

  It was steaming hot and the sweat was pouring down the side of Moodrow’s face; his pants were plastered to his thighs and his unbuttoned jacket showed black under the arms. He laid the bat on the ground, then ripped the already broken trunk from the back of Gunther’s bike and hurled it at the window. The plywood, long exposed to the weather, gave way and crashed backward into the room. “Peter Katjcic, Gunther. If he’s not in there, you come down and take me to him.”

  No answer. Moodrow took up the bat. “I’m getting tired of this shit,” he whispered. “I’m too fucking old. I shoulda let you do it.”

  “Wanna switch?”

  Gunther, his voice filled with equal measures of anger and frustration, broke in before Moodrow had a chance to reply. “Lemme come down and talk to ya? Awright? Gimme two minutes with my people and I’ll be out.” He showed his face in the window just to prove his good intentions. Now Tilley understood the “Gunther” bit. He was blue-eyed and blonde, his wavy hair parted nearly in the center, with a long scar on one cheek. Like many of the outlaw gangs, the Gentlemen were organized on racial lines. Though they despised Jews and other mongrels, they saved their real hatred for the blacks and the Puerto Ricans with whom they constantly did business.

  Five minutes later, the door opened and Gunther, looking like he stepped off a Nazi Youth poster, came out. Tilley was surprised to see him alone, but he seemed at ease as he walked directly to Moodrow.

  “Why the fuck are you doin’ this ta me?” he said, waving his arms. “Why the fuck?” He was a big man, almost as tall as Moodrow, but when Moodrow stepped forward until their noses were about to touch, Gunther took an involuntary step backward.

  “You’re my snitch,” Moodrow said quietly. “You forget that? You’re supposed to keep me informed of what goes down in the neighborhood. Meanwhile, Peter Katjcic’s doing business with Levander Greenwood who you fucking well know I personally wanna see and you don’t even call me. You’re making me look like an asshole in front of my new partner. I don’t like that.”

  “What ya did here today was bullshit, Moodrow. Just for the fuckin’ record. There wasn’t no reason for it. We wanna get Greenwood off the streets as much as you do.”

  “Then why didn’t you get in touch with me as soon as you heard Levander killed that cop? I put out for you. I kept your faggoty ass out of jail when your P.O. wanted to violate your parole and I expect you to pay me back. If you don’t, I’m gonna collect the debt by coming down here every fucking day until I drive your ass out of the Lower East Side. And I’m gonna tell the world why I’m doing it. Now, let’s go find Katjcic. I wanna talk to him.”

  Gunther threw his motorcycle a last, stricken look, then led the way through the lot, across 4th Street and into a sixteen-family white brick tenement, this one still occupied. Moodrow, one hand on Gunther’s elbow to insure a slow pace, kept up a running commentary. “This is my partner, Gunther. This is Detective Tilley. I’m turning him onto my rats. You know, like the little animal with the pointy nose and the tiny, black eyes. Like you. But don’t worry I won’t tell him your real name is Bernard Pushky, not Gunther Bauer. I won’t tell him you come from Bayside instead of Bavaria. And most of all I won’t tell him you got that scar in a schoolyard fight with a Negro. As long as you remember to jump for him the same as me, I won’t say nothing about it.”

  Gunther, the Aryan, took it all without flinching, though his eyes blazed with anger. He was not the sort of man who was accustomed to taking shit, despite his deal. On the other hand, he had violated the terms of the agreement by keeping the news of Levander Greenwood from Moodrow. And he had done it in order to turn a profit. If Moodrow let it slide, without punishing the transgression, he would lose face. The motorcycles might be repaired, but the message would linger. In a real sense, Gunther was as tied to Stanley Moodrow as Rose Carillo was to L
evander Greenwood.

  Perhaps Bernard “Gunther” Pushky didn’t see it quite this way (how many prostitutes ever reach the understanding of Rose Carillo?), but he led the two cops along a corridor on the main floor and pushed into apartment 1C without knocking. The apartment consisted of a single large room dominated by an old, open, convertible sofa. The man lying on the mattress was somewhat smaller than Gunther, but still large. He was propped up on pillows, one side of his face enormously swollen. Bandages covered the back of his head and the shaven skull underneath them announced the presence of stitches. Moodrow and Tilley looked at each other and shrugged, already disappointed.

  “Greenwood do this?” Moodrow asked.

  Katjcic gave the pair his hardest look; his eyes moving deliberately from Tilley’s to Moodrow’s; his feelings for them more than obvious.

  “He asked you a question, asshole,” Tilley said, his voice as full of fury as the look in Katjcic’s eyes. It surprised even him.

  “You don’t know?” Katjcic finally responded.

  “Just say if it’s true or not?” Tilley shouted. “Did Levander Greenwood beat the shit out of you or not?” He allowed himself the luxury of a smirk, then said to Moodrow, much more quietly. “It don’t look like he put up much resistance.”

  “You better talk to this guy,” Moodrow advised Katjcic. “He’s not an old man, like me.”

  “Why’d you bring these fuckers here?” Katjcic asked Gunther.

  Gunther shifted his weight uneasily. “I called,” he answered defensively. “I explained what he was doin’ and ya said to bring the scumbags across.”

  “Scumbags? Scumbags?” It was perfect. Tilley was standing about two feet from Gunther. He slid his right shoulder back about six inches then shot a completely unexpected right hand into Gunther’s chest. It crashed into his ribs about two inches below the left nipple and the outlaw dropped to the floor in a dead faint. “Listen, Katjcic,” Tilley said, careful to keep the hiss in his voice, “If you don’t stop the bullshit, I’m gonna launch an experiment to see if I can’t split open them bruises on your face. Probly do it with a few short jabs.” He hesitated for a second, then stepped forward. “Think I’m bluffing?”

  “All right,” Katjcic said, though the hatred in his eyes glowed even more brightly. “Greenwood did it. I figured you already knew that.”

  “Why should we know it?” Moodrow snapped.

  Katjcic laughed, then wrapped his arms around his ribcage, trying to hold back the pain. “Kubla Kahn is a snitch, man. Kubla Khan is a little mousey goes ‘squeak, squeak, squeak’ in the piggy’s ear. And the piggy tells him who’s heavy and where and when they’re heavy. And the piggy tells him when to hide. And who’s looking. Yessir, the piggy and the mouse.”

  He fell back against the pictures and allowed his eyes to close momentarily. He was stoned on heroin to ease the pain, which was just as well, because he looked halfway to dead. Moodrow knelt by the side of the bed and put his hand on Katjcic’s arm. “Who, Katjcic? Who does Greenwood snitch for? Gimme the name.” He was so eager, he nearly drooled.

  “How do I know?” Katjcic responded. For the first time, his lips curled into a smile. “Maybe it’s you.”

  7

  “YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE DONE that to those motorcycles,” Jim Tilley said for the third time. He pulled at a bottle of Heineken and eyed his partner narrowly. “You can’t destroy private property.”

  “It looked to me like you were having fun,” Moodrow said quietly. “I’m sorry if I got the wrong impression.”

  Tilley shook his head in disgust. “It’s not a question of enjoying it or hating it. It’s a question of being a cop and wanting to stay a cop. I know about you. Everyone on the job knows about you.”

  Moodrow turned and signaled to the barmaid for another beer. They were sitting in a booth in the Killarney Harp, on Houston Street, and the smell of the steam table was making him hungry. He would eat as soon as his partner left. In the meantime, though he was off the clock, he had work to do.

  “So what do they say about me?”

  “They say you think you own the law. They say you’re still living in the old days. When cops were like God.”

  Moodrow laughed. “Like God, huh?” He paused to accept the beer offered by the barmaid, pulling on it eagerly. The sweat had dried on his body, but his suit was still damp and plastered to every fold and crevice of his body. He was very uncomfortable, but a few more beers would make it better. They always did. “So you’re gonna tell me you never went outside the Patrol Guide? I don’t buy it.”

  Tilley blushed, a sudden rush of color brightening pale Irish cheeks. “Even if I did make some mistakes, that doesn’t mean I have to keep on making mistakes. If Gunther Baumann gets hold of a lawyer, we’ll be written up. At the least. Maybe it doesn’t matter to you. Maybe what you said before is right—all they can do is make you retire.”

  “You married, Tilley?” Moodrow suddenly changed the subject, a technique common to interrogations, but not altogether appropriate to barroom conversations.

  “You know I’m not. You read my file.”

  “I mean, do you live with someone? An old lady. Without benefit of clergy.” Moodrow stopped long enough to drain his glass. The beer was refrigerator cold, but the thirst he’d built up during his workout wouldn’t go away. “It ain’t that uncommon right? I been known to do it myself, on occasion.”

  “I live uptown. In Yorkville. With my mother.” Tilley glared at his partner. The mother bit always embarrassed him. Next, Moodrow would be asking him if he was some kind of a fag.

  “Is your mom sick?” Moodrow ignored the signal coming from his partner.

  “Look, we got a four-bedroom apartment up there. Rent-controlled. My father took it five years before he died and we been there ever since. I mean, we’re paying less than five hundred a month for it. Where am I supposed to go? If I left that apartment, I wouldn’t be able to afford Manhattan. I’d probably end up on Long Island.”

  Moodrow motioned to one of the barmaids, a Spanish girl named Cheena, for two more bottles of beer, then abruptly came back to the original topic of conversation. “Okay, you’re ambitious. I don’t have no problem with that. But if you wanted to work your way up in the job, you should have stayed away from the detectives. You should have stayed on patrol. Then you could have got promoted by studying for the exams. Sergeant, lieutenant, captain. You pass, they gotta move you up. In the detectives you get promoted for the busts you make and the influence you got in the big house. And this bust, Jim Tilley, is a big one. You take Levander Greenwood outta the brass’s hair and they’ll kiss your ass from here to City Hall.”

  Moodrow paused, but Tilley had no answer to his partner’s questions. He was asking himself why he hadn’t stayed on patrol. His experience at Fordham had demonstrated the strength of his memory. Promotional exams in the NYPD were all memory, re-hashings of the Patrol Guide. Without meaning to, Jim Tilley reached into his jacket pocket and touched his gold shield, the symbol of the New York detective. In some ways, even the lowest detective has more status than the commissioner. Like a Green Beret standing next to a senator.

  “So what’d ya do?” Moodrow asked, his voice still matter-of-fact.

  “What did I do when?”

  “C’mon. In Fort Greene. You said a minute ago that you pulled some shit when you were on patrol. Tell me what you did.”

  Tilley couldn’t help but grin. “You’re a nosy son of a bitch,” he announced.

  “I’m a cop. It’s my job.”

  “And how about you? What have you done?”

  Moodrow giggled, the high-pitched sound trickling out over the table. “If I start with that, we’ll be here till next week. Levander will die of old age before we get through.”

  “That’s another thing,” Tilley insisted, pulling himself up. “I don’t know what made you promise those two women, but if you’re really planning to execute Levander Greenwood, you better find another partner. That shit
went out fifteen years ago. The headhunters watch too close these days. Not to mention the newspapers.”

  “You think we’re gonna be alone when we take Greenwood?” Moodrow asked innocently. “There’s gonna be a fucking army, for Christ sake.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?” Tilley grinned. His emotions had been on a roller coaster all afternoon. First the bizarre stories of Louise Greenwood and Rose Carillo, then the heart-pounding insanity of Satan’s Gentlemen, now the air-conditioned bar and his third ice-cold beer. It was like the parties he’d thrown after big victories in the amateurs, when he still hoped to make the Olympic team.

  “Tell you what, Jimmy. When the time comes to take Mr. Greenwood, you can call the shots: who gets involved; how we go in; what we do with him. How’s that?”

  “What we do with him, Moodrow, is put him in cuffs and take him to jail.”

  “Fine with me.” Moodrow spread his hands as if he had no objection to standard operating procedure. “Now tell me about Fort Greene.”

  Tilley’s grin spread to cover the lower part of his face. Then he leaned forward. “There was one scumbag in the Two One Four. Name was Daniel Roberts. Called himself Chubs. Liked to get drunk, snort a little coke and spend the weekend beating on his wife and kids. Heavy dumpings, Moodrow. Broken bones. Lost teeth. Faces always swollen and that wet purple color that looks like it’s about to explode. You’d take the bastard away and the next night he’d be back. The courts don’t give a shit what you do to your family if you’re black or Puerto Rican and you got a job. But even when the courts ordered him to stay away, I think his old lady used to invite him back if he had any money. Sometimes these violent guys can talk very sweet and innocent.

  “I didn’t make a real decision to get him. Patrolmen are always moving from one call to another. Like you said, we never get to follow through on anything. We show up at a crime, secure the scene, interview the witnesses, then turn whatever we got over to the detectives. But every time I saw the bastard, I used to get mad and one night, I remember it was freezing cold and near Christmas, I sort of let my feelings catch up to even. I came across him arguing with another man, a nickel-and-dime pot dealer. Chubs was drunk and rowdy, as usual.