Force of Nature

by Stephen Solomita

  “No, I’m all right.” Moodrow dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. “But I’m not gonna be around for the neighborhood much longer. Epstein’s getting pushed out. There’s a Lieutenant Ruiz. Luis Ruiz. He’s forty and he passed the captain’s exam two years ago. Luis does everything right: he’s smart; he’s ambitious; he’s articulate; he’s Puerto Rican. This is the way the department wants it. This is the image. Plus he’s been waiting a long time and he’s good enough.” Moodrow paused to take a breath and fill his glass, sipping at it before he resumed. “Levander Greenwood’s gonna be the straw that breaks the captain’s back. Even if there’s only one cop running Greenwood, the press’ll be all over the precinct. Shit, Levander’s already a fucking media star. When they find out he’s tied to a corrupt cop, he’s gonna make the six o’clock news in Topeka.”

  The bit about Ruiz surprised Tilley. He hadn’t been in the 7th long enough to be aware of the politics, but he’d seen Ruiz confer with Moodrow on several occasions and there had never been any animosity between them. Nevertheless, he sensed some bitterness in Moodrow’s voice.

  “When the captain goes, I go with him,” Moodrow continued. “Ruiz is a good guy. I’ll even give you that he’s a good cop and he understands the precinct ten times better than Camillo and Anderson who also want the job. But Ruiz won’t stick his neck out for me. Why should he? I’m too much of a risk for a very short-term proposition. No, Ruiz’ll transfer me to a fucking desk somewheres. Sure as shit, Jimmy. The department ain’t run my way these days. Now it’s the attack of the Long Island Rambos. Live in Valley Stream and think they know about cops from watching Dirty Harry with that jerk-off bazooka he carries. They wanna make task forces that cover the whole borough. Tactical units so they could transfer out every two weeks and carry a shotgun in the trunk of the car.”

  What he said was partially true. A majority of New York cops live outside the city (or on Staten Island, which is the same thing) and most white cops (Tilley included) grew up in blue-collar, middle-class neighborhoods. To a certain extent, Tilley was prepared for his submersion in the lower depths by his years in the ring, but there’s no way he could really know Fort Greene or the Lower East Side as if he’d grown up there. On the other hand, affirmative action programs have gone a long way toward bringing minorities into the city’s civil service and there’s a new wave of young blacks and Puerto Ricans who are intimately familiar with the territory.

  “So what are you saying, Moodrow, that hasn’t been said a hundred times before?”

  “Look, any other neighborhood—Bed-Stuy, Brownsville, East Harlem—there’s kids grow up there who become cops. But they don’t stay there, Jimmy. They save their pennies and buy houses in the suburbs. If that’s the American dream, it’s fine with me, but there’s gotta be someone to speak up for the neighborhoods.” He poured himself another drink (his third) and threw Tilley his cherub-innocent face. “I figure I got time to train you to take my place. But just barely.”

  “What’re you, fuckin’ nuts?” Tilley rose halfway out of his seat.

  “Take it easy. Take it easy.” Moodrow grabbed his partner by the shirt and literally held him down. The son of a bitch, Tilley noted, was as strong as a gorilla. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I always did have a big fucking mouth. After a while, you’ll want to.” Moodrow drained the glass of bourbon as if it was water. “All right, take down this address. Come tonight about one o’clock. I’ll show you the rest of it.”

  He gave Tilley the address on 11th Street, at the northern end of the precinct, between Second and Third, right where the Lower East Side gives way to much ritzier Greenwich Village.

  “Say, Moodrow?” Tilley couldn’t resist the parting question, though he was sure he knew the answer. “Where does Ruiz live?”

  Moodrow looked up at Tilley, then down at his glass, then back at him. “Westchester.”

  An hour later Tilley was in his living room, Jeanette on his lap. He was reading her a story while Susanna entertained Lee on the other side of the room. They were working with an ancient computer, one of those tiny Ataris sold by the thousands one Christmas when American parents decided, en masse, that the destinies of their children revolved around the ownership of a personal computer. It was the middle-class equivalent of Operation Head Start, though it was less effective. In fact, most of these computers found their way onto closet shelves in suburban basements as soon as the children became bored with the video game package sold with the unit. This Atari, a relic, had filtered down to Lee Greenwood via a sympathetic volunteer at the day care center where Rose sent the kids when grandma wasn’t available. Susanna Tilley had been a programmer before she went to the data processing department at Salomon Brothers and she was showing Lee how to make the computer draw Mighty Mouse on the screen of their television. Lee was only marginally interested, though he loved Mighty Mouse. He understood how to do it, but lacked the patience to put his knowledge into practice. On the other hand, he worshipped Susanna and he would sit there and fake it long enough to learn the process, at least until his own mother finished making dinner.

  Lee had still not accepted Tilley’s presence in his life, but there was no way Tilley and Rose could keep their feelings private. Though the two of them were still too shy (she of her children and he of his mother) to hug or kiss in public, both children knew something was going on. Lee dealt with it by attaching himself to Susanna. Jeanette, on the other hand, had apparently decided to seduce the seducer. Whenever Tilley entered the apartment, solemn as a miniature butler, she took him by the hand, led him to the green armchair in the living room, perched on his lap and demanded a story. One story—that was her deal.

  She kept her supply in a little cabinet near the kitchen. As soon as she knew he was coming in, she would walk to this cabinet, carefully choose a book and then look up at him, the beginning of a smile on her face. The plots of these stories were almost identical. A giant (or a monster or a demon) terrorizes the poor humans. This giant is as merciless as he is ferocious, often preferring the flesh of children to that of adults. At first the situation looks hopeless and Jeanette, totally absorbed, grips Tilley’s arm fiercely, but then, unexpectedly, a hero arrives. Tall, young and, inevitably, white, he fights and kills the giant. Kills him dead.

  As Tilley sat down to a meal with his new family, Moodrow wandered south, across Houston and Delancey, into the underbelly of the Lower East Side, past Stanton, Rivington and Broome, the heart of the dope scene, to Grand Street with its discount dry goods emporiums. There were plenty of shoppers still active here, Puerto Ricans and Asians as well as the Jews who still lived along this street. The kids were out in force, bare-chested against the heat and browned by the sun, their sharp voices breaking with adolescence. The girls, quieter, gathered around ghetto blasters (kept mercifully low this close to a commercial district), and thrust their suddenly-discovered sexuality at prospective boyfriends.

  Old women, their heads wrapped in scarves, trailed dresses that ran to the tops of hi-top black leather shoes, the same leather shoes the punks along Avenue B snapped up the minute they were displayed in the windows of secondhand clothing stores. Junkies, wearing long-sleeved shirts to cover the scars on their veins, scurried along, eyes darting from car to truck to store, looking for anything unguarded. Sixteen-year-old kid dealers, on their way to the small park behind the Seward Park Houses, displayed gold chains around their necks, the way their consorts displayed their charms in gym shorts that fell two inches short of covering their buttocks.

  As Moodrow walked east, toward the river, the shops gave way to large apartment buildings, to restaurants, supermarkets, drugstores. The housing here was mostly middle-income, though desperate slums, many abandoned and awaiting demolition, provided retail outlets for the crack, the dope, the weed that kept the other side of the neighborhood afloat.

  Moodrow could not stop thinking of it as his neighborhood. He had fought the job as well as the criminals for so long, that leaving it would b
e the equivalent of entering another lifetime. Which might have been all right, if he could have conjured up another life worth having. Lacking that, he had, by his own lights, to settle for Jim Tilley.

  “You Moodrow there. You Moodrow. Please. Here.”

  Moodrow turned to find a young, white woman, thin, in her twenties, staring up at him. “Yeah?” It took him a few seconds to pull himself back to the present. “Do I know you?”

  “Please. You are Moodrow, yes?”

  Moodrow couldn’t help but smile. “I am Moodrow, yes.” The woman’s eyes were so dark and serious, he half-expected her to genuflect and kiss his ring.

  “I am Lisa Epanomitis. I am Greek, but Jewish friend I have, Sarah Eskenazi, says you are man to see for helping me.”

  Sarah Eskenazi was a cousin of Alma Epstein, the captain’s wife, and her recommendation was enough to make him listen. It was too hot to stand in the sun and Moodrow led the woman into a small Israeli cafe where he ordered a beer for himself and ice tea for her.

  “Why don’t you just get started,” Moodrow said gently.

  “I have boyfriend. Niko Makresias. Since I come to this country. He is not such a good boy sometimes and the police have put him in Rikers Island jail for having cocaine. Now he has problems.”

  “So why don’t he make bail and get out?”

  “They give him ten thousand dollars bail. Where is he getting ten thousand dollars? He is immigrant. He is poor.”

  “Wait a second.” Moodrow took a long pull on his beer. “This is a white guy, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why do I think I’m getting hustled here?”

  “I do not know what is hustled.”

  “Tell me something, Miss Epanomitis, how much coke did your boyfriend have when the police picked him up?”

  “One kilo.”

  “A fucking kilo? Are you crazy?” The woman cringed, but Moodrow, unimpressed, pushed harder. “Let’s dump the innocent immigrant bit. A kilo of coke is gonna get him sent upstate for at least a couple of years. After which he’s gonna be deported. Which I don’t give two shits to prevent.”

  The woman looked up for the first time and Moodrow saw that, even if she wasn’t the little match girl, she was still afraid for her man.

  “Listen,” she said more strongly. “Niko is stupid, not bad. You understand this? In jail, he cannot take care of himself and the blacks, they try to make him into a woman. He fights. Niko is not a coward, but there are so many and he cannot fight everyday. He asks for protection and they put him in a cell twenty-four hours a day and even there he is not safe. The blacks say they will set his cell on fire with him inside. I think Niko will kill himself if he does not get away from them.”

  “Enough, already. You think you’re telling me something new here? What makes you think I can help him?”

  “This is what I learned from Mrs. Eskenazi. That I should speak to the Detective Moodrow who would help me.”

  “You live around here?”

  “In Astoria.”

  “That’s what I figured. Why should I help you?”

  Lisa Epanomitis looked back down to the floor. “I have only one thing to offer. I will give it to you if you help my Niko.”

  Moodrow stared at her, expecting a gold chain or some other piece of jewelery as payment for his services. When he finally understood that she was referring to her body, he nearly fell off the chair laughing. “What I could probably do is as follows. I know the warden in protective custody where I presume your boyfriend now lives. I could get him transferred to the Tombs in Manhattan which has no dormitories and better guards. It’s safer, but it still ain’t the Plaza. Niko’s gonna be inside for a long time. That kinda weight carries mandatory time. It’s an A-l felony which is a minimum of three years and a maximum of life. You tell Niko to get his hands on a shank and stick it in the face of the first con tries to grab his butt. In the long run, if they got him spotted for a punk, that’s the only way he’s gonna come out of it with his asshole intact. And you can keep your body. I owe Sarah Eskenazi a favor, so if you hustled her, good for you. Either way, I’m even up.”

  Susanna Tilley went to her weekly bridge game at 8:30. The kids went to sleep at nine o’clock. Rose and Tilley went to bed at 9:30.

  Thinking about it later, it was Tilley’s belief that keeping the affair hidden (in spite of knowing that everyone else knew exactly what they were doing, including Sergeant Stanley Moodrow) increased the intensity of those first few weeks. He knew that, inevitably, as soon as she came into the room, he wanted her. And no matter how many times they made love (made love? they fucked like two hogs in a swamp), the touch of her body set him on fire.

  It had never happened to him before. Even the accidental touch of her breasts on his arm as she sat cross-legged on the bed, telling him of her plans for the future, complaining about her children or her finances, evaluating professors and fellow students, made him instantly hard. He wanted to ingest her. He wanted to take her flesh into his body, to become her flesh burning his skin away like acid burning the rust off tarnished metal.

  In spite of the heat on this particular night, Tilley turned off the air conditioner, then waited, just stroking her gently, until the sweat poured from her dense black hair to run swiftly along the vein at the center of her throat. He sucked at it, sucked at her throat, then down over her breasts and belly as if he could suck out her soul.

  But that was the one thing Tilley could never touch. Rose had long ago embraced the belief that no man (or woman, for that matter) could save her. Or even that a man could protect her. Only Moodrow. Moodrow was the hero who would deliver her and the children from the evil giant. After which, she would never need anyone again. It was that simple. Tilley never mentioned Louise Greenwood’s request that Moodrow keep her son alive and, though Rose spoke to her mother-in-law nearly everyday, Mrs. Greenwood apparently never mentioned it either.

  Not that Rose was obsessed with her ex-husband’s death. Most of their conversations, when she wasn’t thanking him or Susanna for giving her refuge, revolved around the future. Rose had decided to become an accountant; further, to become an accountant and work for the city. Like most of those engaged in civil service, she was aware of the coming revolution in New York City politics. The black and Puerto Rican minorities are not minorities anymore. The old Irish-Italian-Jewish coalition, which has run the city for decades is being challenged on every front and the changing of the guard is nowhere more apparent than in the city’s underbelly, in the bureaucracy which makes New York possible.

  Rose was acutely aware of her children’s color. Though she never bothered moralizing on the failures of white society, she had no illusion that she would be accepted by corporate America. Or that the coming political revolution would extend to the giant companies which occupy the postcard skyscrapers. “If I pass the exam,” she explained, “I’ll be a C.P.A. It’s the only profession that doesn’t require graduate school. The city pays about fifty percent less than private industry for accountants, so there’s plenty of demand. It’s nearly impossible to get fired if you work for the city and nobody gives a shit about your private life.”

  “So when you’re a big shot,” Tilley teased, “I suppose you’ll finally move out of that slum.”

  “Jim, you must be kidding. I’ve got a five room apartment I pay two hundred and thirty dollars a month for. As long as there’s rent control in New York, I’ll never leave.” Then she told him the story of how she had gotten the apartment in the first place. “Somehow, about ten years ago, Levander got close to a real estate speculator, an Armenian named Burt Artujian. This Armenian would do virtually anything for money and Levander fit right into his plans. Artujian bought rent-controlled buildings, buildings that other landlords were ready to walk away from, with the intention of turning them co-op. Naturally, he had to get the tenants out first. What better way than to have Levander move in?

  “We lived in six different buildings in two years. Levander t
errorized tenants, especially the old ones who had the lowest rents. He was still working for Artujian when the judge finally sent him away. Naturally, the Armenian tried to have me evicted, but a judge in the housing court, instead of throwing me out, forced Artujian to give me a lease. Then Artujian was arrested for tax evasion and the city seized the building. That’s when the services stopped. No more super. No more plumbers. No more electricians. We’re trying to buy the building and turn it into a co-op. I mean the present tenants.”

  “You include yourself in that ‘we’?”

  Suddenly she was angry. “Fuck that,” she declared. “That motherfucker isn’t gonna keep me out of my home forever. I have a right to my home.”

  Tilley had heard this speech before, had actually provoked it deliberately and he started to laugh. Not surprisingly, Rose punched him in the chest, a halfway decent shot, but it was the sight of her body as the sheet slipped off her shoulders that took his breath away.

  “Don’t make fun of me, Jimmy.”

  “Why? You going somewhere?”

  She sat back up and her features relaxed. “You’ll never know what it’s like. You can’t. You’re a man and you’ve got all those muscles. So many muscles. They even grow between your ears.”

  Touché. Sooner or later you reach the point where you know how to press each other’s buttons. Is this a sign of progress? Tilley’s greatest fear, whenever he was around people whose opinions he respected, was to be thought stupid. An ex-pug. Scarred, but amusing, not, however, to be taken seriously. That fear had underlined most of his early suspicions about Moodrow and Rose had found this fear very quickly. Just as he’d discovered her obsession with personal freedom.

  At 12:15, he got dressed and headed over to Moodrow’s. They were through with their fight by that time. Had made love, then snuck into the shower together, something they didn’t ordinarily do for fear one of the children would awaken and come looking for mom. He kissed Rose goodbye in the doorway to her room, snapped the hall light off and left the house.