Force of Nature

by Stephen Solomita

  “I want to raise my children on the Lower East Side,” she explained. “You think I didn’t see the way your neighbor looked at us when we came through the door that first day?”

  “You mean Strauss?”

  “I see that look everyday,” she said gently. “And if I’m getting it in New York, imagine what it would be like in Boise? The Lower East Side is the only place I know where my kids won’t be rejected before they have a chance to show what they are. I’m sure there’re other neighborhoods in other big cities, but I don’t know them. The only place I know where there are so many freaks that me and the kids look like ordinary citizens is the Lower East Side and that’s where I want to live. And I can’t live there knowing that any knock on the door might be Levander coming home to collect his property.”

  Her answer brought up a question that had been bothering Tilley for days. “That morning, when I came through the door and you were holding the gun. If it was him, Rose, would you have pulled the trigger?”

  Her mouth curled into a sudden, disbelieving smile. Of all the asshole questions Tilley had asked in his life, that was the stupidest. If Levander Greenwood had been on the other side of that door, she would have blown his eyeballs right through the back of his fucking head.

  14

  AS THE TASK FORCE moved from location to location, Stanley Moodrow watched his partner closely. Raids like these were essentially bully operations. The surprise, the savagery, the overwhelming manpower were all designed to eliminate the possibility of resistance. The objects of the attacks, the junkies and the pushers, were reduced to helplessness by the level of force used against them. In most cases, they were terrified and if truth be told, many cops derive a great deal of pleasure from their enemy’s fear. Moodrow had long ago defined his aim as a cop—to separate the criminals from the citizens and it was his opinion that cops who indulged their sadism rarely kept that primary aim in focus.

  Thus, for Moodrow, frightening already half-dead junkies was a joyless task. But he didn’t run from it. Not every aspect of police work was pleasurable, but what had to be done had to be done. If you were going to be effective, you took the good with the bad.

  Of course, it was easy for Moodrow, thirty-five years into the job, to be philosophical. It was Jim Tilley’s first experience at rendering unendurable the already miserable lives of New York’s addicts. Initially, the young cop had been apprehensive, his service revolver, barrel to the ceiling, held tight against the side of his head. But at the end of the first day, as he began to understand that Levander Greenwood was not hiding behind those doors, his attitude eased considerably, even as other members of the team gleefully smashed plates and furniture, as they cracked jokes while ripping into the soft bellies of teddy bears: “You don’t got no dope in here, do ya, mamacita?” Then a smirk as they slapped the faces of any brazen enough to challenge their authority.

  Tilley’s expression, Moodrow noted, grew more and more grim as the days went by. He stopped talking, became almost a hermit within their midst, yet he continued to do his job professionally, staying as close to Moodrow as possible.

  “You having a good time, Jimmy?” Moodrow asked as the team finished destroying the last apartment on the day’s list.

  “I’d rather direct traffic at a Jets’ game in a snowstorm,” Tilley observed. “Does this crap really do any good?”

  “Yeah, I’d have to say it does. If Greenwood’s operating anywhere near here, someone’ll give him up. Money talks, bullshit walks. And as far as the dopers are concerned, Levander Greenwood is just so much bullshit.”

  Tilley shook his head in disgust. “What the fuck we’re doing here…” He pointed to the mess, to the figures huddled against the wall. “These assholes enjoy it. I thought detectives were professional. This is stupid.”

  They were silent for a few moments, watching the faces of a Cuban family whose furniture was being systematically rendered into kindling. In his inexperience, Tilley expected rage, but, no surprise to Moodrow, the expressions were blank. Only the eyes demonstrated an ultimate resignation, as if the victims, too, believed they deserved this treatment. The family would have to leave the apartment, at least temporarily, for fear that the team would come back and do something worse. That could easily mean a homeless shelter and the separation of the father from his family.

  “So what’d you think, Jimmy? You thought maybe it was gonna be like Agatha Christie? Charlie Chan, maybe? I got some hot news for you, it’s more like Paul Bunyan than Sherlock Holmes.”

  Tilley grinned ruefully. “I think I shoulda stayed in college.”

  “Listen,” Moodrow wrapped one enormously powerful hand around his partner’s arm. “I almost never stay with these assholes. Y’understand? Once in a while in cases like this, but usually I’m far away from the bullshit. That’s what I’m saying could happen for you. I got ways I haven’t even shown you a piece of. Just be patient. You’re gonna get it all.”

  An hour later, as Tilley made his way uptown, Moodrow walked along Avenue B, his eyes searching those of his neighbors. If he was satisfied with his partner’s performance, he was anything but happy with the status of their search for Levander Greenwood. He tried, unsuccessfully, to conjure up an image of Greenwood’s place of refuge. Like a burrowing animal, Greenwood continued to emerge in search of prey, then disappear as soon as he’d fed. Since every incident had taken place on the Lower East Side, Greenwood had to be somewhere close by. The small scale of his thefts (which bore no relation to the scale of his violence) precluded the possibility of any motivation more complicated than desperation.

  As he strolled along, Moodrow was greeted by many of the shopkeepers, most of whom were quick to inquire about the Greenwood case. At first, he thought they were being critical, but then he realized that, from their point of view, the massive police presence brought on by Greenwood’s crimes made their lives that much easier. The criminals, the junkies, the crack addicts, were staying off the streets and that made legitimate customers feel more at ease. For once, it was a pleasure to walk the streets of the Lower East Side.

  Moodrow was not heading home. It was after eight o’clock and he stopped to pick up a ham sandwich, a six-pack of beer and a bag of potato chips, then continued walking west on 11th Street, searching faces as if Levander Greenwood might appear at any moment. Now that his official police day was over, he could begin the work he expected would finally bring him to Levander Greenwood. He walked past Avenue A and First Avenue, leaving most of the tenements behind. There were brownstones here, mixed in with the cheaper housing, and the process of gentrification, this far from the projects on Avenue D, was almost complete. Along Second Avenue, one trendy restaurant after another begged for the credit cards of the newly affluent. Boutiques sat side by side with antique and art galleries. Moodrow ignored it all, plodding on until he reached a five story brownstone across from St. Mark’s Church between Second and Third.

  The building had an entrance, below street level, for what should have been the apartment opening out to the garden in the rear. In fact, it consisted of a single, small room with a bathroom (toilet and sink) off to one side. The walkway from the street to the door, a series of granite steps, twisted back on itself and the doorway, without a light of course, was deep in the shadows.

  This was Stanley Moodrow’s office. Far more productive than his desk in the 7th, the apartment was known to each of the dozens of informants he had built up in his thirty-five years on the job. He had put the word out; he wanted Levander Greenwood. Now, he hoped, the telephone would begin to ring and the underworld of the Lower East Side would drop by to visit. As he popped open a can of beer and bit into his sandwich, he thought briefly of Rose Carillo and then of an old love, Rita Melengic. He had seen Rita die, seen that flame go out of his life forever and he would not let it happen to Rose, even if he had to tear the Lower East Side apart brick by brick.

  Three hours later, half asleep on a battered sofa, he was startled by the ringing of an ol
d rotary telephone. It was his third call of the evening. The first two had given him the same piece of news: no one was claiming credit for Greenwood’s death. Levander would never let the cop running him get close enough to make an attempt, but he could have gotten it on the street from any one of a hundred people anxious for revenge. But then, of course, the shooter would be putting out the word in every bar on the Lower East Side. No cowboy could resist the temptation to display that scalp.

  “Yeah?” Moodrow’s voice was thick with sleep.

  “Are you still spending your nights in that hole? When are you going to reform?”

  For a moment, he couldn’t place the woman’s voice. It was familiar, all right, but he was so locked into his hunt for Greenwood, he kept trying to place it with those who might call with messages about his quarry.

  “Stanley, if you don’t say my name right this minute, you’re going to spend a very lonely night.”

  “Just like all the rest of them.”

  “Don’t be bitter, dear. Do I have to give you a hint?”

  “No, Tamara, you don’t. How’s life on Wall Street? Does it beat working on your back?”

  “And my knees and my stomach?”

  “That, too.”

  “Well, to be absolutely honest with you, it’s more stressful, but the benefits are a lot better. I’ve got hospitalization now that covers gonorrhea. You looking for company tonight?”

  Moodrow smiled for the first time in hours. “Yeah. Please.”

  “Should I bring a pizza?”

  “Just bring a slice.”

  As Moodrow tried, unsuccessfully, to push the litter into a corner with a worn broom, its handle long ago broken on a recalcitrant visitor, he considered the phenomenon of Tamara Whitefoot. She had literally worked her way through school as a call girl, pushing ten thousand dollars a year of her income into college and post-graduate tuition. She wasn’t attractive enough to command the five-hundred-dollar client, but had more than enough class to avoid the streets. Her plan was to complete her education without piling up fifty thousand dollars in educational loans. Instead of years of struggle to repay the banks, she would have a serious portfolio.

  The only blot in this carefully worked-out scenario was the potential for getting busted. As a business major, Tamara knew that virtually every big brokerage house investigated the backgrounds of prospective executives. When Stanley Moodrow had walked in on her that afternoon and pulled Johnny Palmer out of the saddle, she had seen her career go straight down the toilet. Of course, she had no way of knowing that Mister Palmer, who presented himself as a plumbing supply executive, was a con artist who specialized in removing old ladies from their life savings. To her, he was just another horny male with a hundred dollars.

  She begged Moodrow not to arrest her, though she was sure he would have to use her to establish the time and place of the bust. As she made her plea, Moodrow looked on incredulously.

  “Forget about it,” he finally said. “I never arrested a whore in my life. Not for fucking. And I don’t think I’m gonna start now.” He gave Johnny Palmer, who was small, skinny and very shriveled, a shake. “As for Mr. Palmer, I don’t expect he’ll mind too bad if I say I took him on the street.” He passed the stunned Tamara Whitefoot a business card. It had no name on it, just a telephone number. “You give me a call the next couple of days. Maybe you could help me sometime.”

  Surprisingly, Tamara called two days later, then took the trip to Moodrow’s 11th Street office. As it turned out, she worked a little too far up the prostitution ladder to know much about the street, but she had been as intrigued with Moodrow’s odd relationship with the NYPD as he was with her educational ambitions.

  That was fifteen years ago, five years before Tamara Whitefoot took her MBA and went to work for Bache Halsey in the financial district. Curiously, as an entry level executive, even with a portfolio, she had found the attitudes of her superiors, male and female, every bit as objectionable as the johns she’d left behind, and after three years of paying her dues, had opened up her own office and worked her portfolio into seven figures. With that kind of money, she could have bought Chippendale’s chorus line, but every few months something in her reached for a link to the past and that link was Stanley Moodrow.

  Though Moodrow had been pushing dirt around for twenty minutes, by the time the bell rang, the apartment was as messy as when he’d started. Moodrow tossed the broom into the corner and went to the door.

  “Hi, Stanley. How’s it hangin’?”

  “Fuck, I don’t think it’s hanging at all.”

  Tamara Whitefoot, thirty-eight and a long time gym freak, had the carefully honed body of a teenager. She wore a black mini, cut high enough to show the softly rounded edge of her pink, cotton panties. In keeping with her Indian name and background, a supple white vest barely covered her breasts. Her cheeks were brightly rouged, her eyes burdened with enormous lashes and electric blue eye shadow. “Here’s ya pizza, sir,” she said, jaws working a wad of gum. “That’ll be ten dollas and fifty cents. Without a tip.”

  Moodrow took a step backward, regarding the pizza box dubiously. “Wait a second, lady, I didn’t order no whole pizza. I only asked for a slice.”

  Tamara stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. “Maybe that’s why the box is empty,” she said.

  PROPERTY: NYPD

  B3445-FF MAJOR CASES PATROLMAN REPORT FORM

  date 8/29 hand

  stenographer none

  sig.

  civ. emp.

  patrolman Patricia Kelly

  sig. Patricia Kelly

  shield #19413 pct.7th

  cross reference 7th pct—Homicide

  Approximately fourteen hundred hours. Routine foot patrol with partner, Martin Samuels, on Allen Street. Heard gunshots from the west, approximately one block distance. Called in report of shots fired. Requested backup.

  Ran one block to Eldridge Street where I observed several civilians exiting from partially abandoned building at 2113 Eldridge Street. Civilians broke up and ran in different directions as we approached, but male Hispanic, approximately thirty years of age, indicated that gunshots had been fired on the fifth floor.

  We proceeded into the building and up the stairway. There were no sounds and all doors were closed. Took approximately six minutes to arrive on fifth floor landing where we observed door to 5B slightly ajar. Smell of gunpowder very strong in the hallway.

  We knocked on the door and identified ourselves as police. No response. Acting on belief that a felony had been committed within the premises, we then pushed the door open. I observed a black male infant, approximately nine months of age, lying on the carpet in the hallway. Infant had apparent shotgun-type wound to the abdomen and was motionless. Extreme loss of blood was evident and infant appeared to be dead.

  Entered main room of dwelling. Observed male and female blacks, both approximately twenty years old. Male black had apparent shotgun-type wound to the face and appeared to be dead. Female black had suffered shotgun-type wound to both legs, but was conscious.

  We proceeded into the bedroom and noted open window to fire escape. Bedroom was empty. We continued to search the closets and bathroom until the apartment was secured. I called Central for an ambulance and the patrol supervisor. My partner, Martin Samuels, placed a tourniquet on the upper thighs of female black. Examination showed child and male black to be apparently dead.

  Observed numerous evidence of contraband use within premises, including envelopes filled with white powder, scale, syringes, candle, spoons with bottom burned black. Advised female black of her Miranda rights then asked her to identify herself. Female black identified herself as Yvonne Carson. I asked her if she wanted to talk to us and she said, “Levander Greenwood did this to me. Levander Greenwood killed my family.”

  Ambulance arrived approximately fourteen hundred twenty hours. Patrol supervisor arrived approximately fourteen hundred twenty-five hours. Relieved by Sergeant Grassi and ordered to s
ecure the crime scene which I did.

  15

  MOODROW AND TILLEY WERE uptown when they caught the squeal over the Special Ops channel on the radio. They were sharing this channel with two unrelated task forces, but even so, it was far quieter than the endless static, punctuated by dull cop voices, from Central on channel two. Their vehicle was designated as Green 5, the last of the vehicles involved in Operation Greenwood and the message came from task force headquarters in the 7th Precinct building.

  “Base to Green 5. Base to Green 5, K.”

  At first they ignored the request to respond. In truth, they didn’t even hear it. Then it was repeated twice more, followed by, “You out there, Moodrow? Please. For just once don’t make us have to look for you.” Moodrow’s tendency to be away from (or even to ignore) radio messages was legendary and a constant source of friction between him and the Murphys.

  “Green 5, K.” The radio mike literally disappeared in Moodrow’s fist, like a jelly bean in the hand of a child.

  “Hey, I got ’em.” Then a scrabble of overlapping voices before Kirkpatrick came on. “Hey, Moodrow.” No dispatcher, he actually waited for an answer, then repeated: “Hey, Moodrow.”

  “Yes, dear,” Moodrow said.

  “Our boy finally come outta his cave. Twenty-one thirteen Eldridge, fifth floor. Two dead, one survivor.”

  Moodrow sat straight up in his seat. With the mike closed, he said, “I think this is it, Jimmy. I think the motherfucker just made his one mistake.” Then he opened the mike and asked, “What’d he get?”

  “What’d he get? You mean Greenwood?”

  “No, I mean your fucking grandmother.”

  “You can’t use them words on the radio, Moodrow. You’re gonna get us in trouble with the FCC.”

  “Please,” Moodrow said after a pause.

  “Now that’s better. That’s the magic word. Levander got drugs. Like always.”