Force of Nature

by Stephen Solomita

  Outside, he double-locked the apartment, turned toward the stairway and tripped over a large paper shopping bag. The bag was filled with bananas and there was a note pinned to the outside. It read, “Food for the monkeys.”

  A few moments later, standing near the outer door, he scanned the names printed next to the apartment buzzers. Irish. Italian. German. One Ukrainian. One Pole. They, like his mother and himself, had been there for ages.

  20

  THE ADDRESS MOODROW GAVE Tilley, his “office” on 11th Street, was so lost in its own melodramatic shadows that once inside, Tilley couldn’t help asking Moodrow if he was a cop or a spy.

  “The people I see down here ain’t Russians, but they are spies.” Moodrow opened a small refrigerator and offered Tilley a bottle of beer. “This apartment is owned by a friend of my old man’s, Arthur Flashman. He was in the garment business when he was young. In fucking hangers, believe it or not. Made his fortune and moved into this brownstone. Arthur’s a cop buff. Loves the force so much he has a whore come in every Wednesday to put him in handcuffs. At least he used to. Now he’s almost eighty. I talked him into giving me this room about twenty years ago. No rent. Just detailed stories of murders and rapes. I haven’t laid eyes on the guy in the last five years, but this is the place I do my business. I got more than fifty regular snitches and they all know to find me here. We’ll have a lotta visitors tonight.”

  He wasn’t kidding. Fifteen minutes after Tilley arrived, the phone rang (the phone, four ancient armchairs, a cigarette-scarred endtable and the refrigerator made up the total furnishings) and Moodrow announced a terse, “Okay” after listening for about thirty seconds. Five minutes later, the bell rang and two women, one obviously a hooker, the other in white slacks and a matching jacket, pushed into the center of the room. The hooker, a platinum blonde in an electric-blue, spandex miniskirt, sat heavily in a chair. She crossed her legs, shoved a wad of Juicy Fruit gum into her mouth and looked away indifferently.

  “Who’s your friend, Moodrow?” The second woman, tall and willowy, ran her hand through her dark hair and gestured over at Tilley.

  “This is my partner. I already told you about him, Cecil. His name’s Tilley.” Moodrow’s voice was cold, the voice of a businessman come to the bargaining table. “Jimmy, this is Cecil. Cecil runs a string of girls working Third Avenue. We do each other favors. The lady on the chair is Lucille.”

  Though they exchanged cold glances, nobody said a word. Tilley was acutely aware of the fact that information is the real barometer of success in the job. Even if he wasn’t too thrilled with Moodrow’s plans for his future, Tilley couldn’t help but feel that his partner was passing on the efforts of an entire career.

  Moodrow broke the silence. “Blue Thunder. You know what that is?”

  “Sure.” Cecil answered without hesitation. “Eldridge Street smack.”

  “Any of your girls use it? Your customers? Your protection?”

  “Probably. Junkies get their dope where they can.”

  “You hear about any Blue Thunder, you let me know who’s holding it. Big time, Cecil. If I found out you knew and you didn’t tell me, I’d remember it forever.”

  Tilley found out later that Moodrow was usually a bargainer and not a threatener. In any event, Cecil took a deep breath and turned her face away from his. She met Lucille’s eyes and they must have exchanged some kind of message, because she turned back to Moodrow and began to challenge him purposefully. “Everybody knows Levander Greenwood pulled that rip-off. He’s the only one crazy enough.”

  “Greenwood won’t put it back on the street. It’ll be somebody else. Somebody I gotta find in one piece.”

  Cecil cocked her head and smiled. “You think it’s coming back into the Lower East Side?”

  “I dunno. I hope so.”

  “You want me to look real hard for this dope?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I got a problem. I gotta get someone off the street.” She finally sat down and relaxed. “Gimme a beer.”

  Moodrow obliged. Though he had no glasses (not even a paper napkin to wipe the top of the can), neither Cecil nor Lucille seemed offended. They drank for a moment, then Cecil made a gesture toward her purse. “Would it be okay to do a couple of lines?”

  Moodrow looked at Tilley and blushed. “You’re gonna make my partner think I’m a fucking dope fiend.”

  Lucille spoke for the first time. Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact. “Moodrow don’t use cocaine,” she said. “We was talking about for us. But maybe we should forget about it.” She threw her partner another significant look. They were questioning the level of Tilley’s involvement.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for?” Moodrow’s voice was surprisingly gentle.

  Once again Cecil smiled. “I need protection from my protection.” She paused for effect and Moodrow waved her to keep going. “My girls and me don’t have a pimp. We pay a straight two thousand dollars a week to a group of Puerto Rican gentlemen for the privilege of operating in their territory. Now the Ricans are getting themselves run off by a pack of Dominicans from Chelsea.” She stopped to light a cigarette, her mouth curling up in contempt. “Sounds like an ethnic comedy, right? Meanwhile the Ricans can’t take care of me, so I’m negotiating with this Dominican named Elio, who’s mostly into cocaine and not whores. Then just when I think I got a deal, Elio says I gotta send my girls up when he and his boys wanna party. Some of the girls like to party. Fuck for money or fuck for dope, it’s all the same to them. But not as a matter of principle. So I said, ‘No’ and he said he’d run me off Third Avenue.”

  “And what’d you say to that?” Moodrow asked.

  “I told the asshole I had friends in low places and walked the fuck out.”

  The words, spoken at breakneck speed, rattled through the room. Then she stopped dead, as if Moodrow should know what she wanted.

  “These Puerto Rican boys work out of a social club down by Avenue B?” Moodrow finally asked.

  “Yeah. The Barcalounger.”

  “You mean the Barcelona?”

  “Well, we got our own name. They took a big bust six months ago and they haven’t come back from it.”

  “And the Dominicans?”

  “If they got a name, I don’t know it. But they’re all supposed to be from Santiago, which is in the north. They have connections in Peru for the paste. It’s easy to run from Peru into the Dominican Republic. Elio brags about it. He’s all ego. That’s why he thinks my women are his property. Shit, if I can’t protect them from Elio, I can’t be no use to them at all.”

  Moodrow tossed the can of beer into an open garbage bag, already half full of empty cans. “I’m expecting a lot of company tonight, Cecil. Think you might get to the point.”

  Cecil took a deep breath and launched into it. “They process the paste into coke and smuggle it by speedboat from some place in the Dominican jungle. It lands on the east coast—a different point every trip. Then they bring it to a house on 27th Street and cut it up for distribution. I know they’re gonna meet a boat two days from now. They move in the neighborhood of ten kilos a trip.”

  “You got intentions of testifying?” Moodrow said softly.

  “Forget it.”

  “I take it you’re under the opinion that if you take Elio off the street, it’ll give the Ricans a chance to recover. Then you go back to them for protection. That right?”

  “That’s exactly it.”

  “I can pass it along to the dicks working Chelsea and they’ll probably put the house under observation, if they don’t know about it already. But there’s no way they can get warrants unless you testify.”

  “What if I know the car? It’s a van, actually.”

  “You got the license plate? Year and model?”

  “Yeah. And I also know the scumbag’ll be driving it himself.”

  “You said ‘ten kilos’?”

  “Ten kilos.”

  “Write down the year, make and
model and the license plate. I’ll do what I can. And Cecil, I want whoever’s holding Blue Thunder. No bullshit. That’s the road to Greenwood and that means better business for everyone.”

  Cecil and Lucille left without another word being spoken. Not even “so long” or “see ya later.” The business of business is, apparently, business. Then Tilley found out how wrong he’d been about the two of them. Cecil and Lucille were lovers, partners and absolute equals in the administration of their affairs. Neither of them were prostitutes. Lucille’s bizarre dress, her platinum hair and rhinestone halter scooped low over ample breasts were simply part of the bohemian scene on the Lower East Side. The scene the media refers to as “punk.” In the late-night druggie bars, the clientele was uniformly hip and it was Jim Tilley, in his Izod shirt and summerweight pants who was the freak.

  Moodrow, of course, had known them too long to be impressed with their relationship or their appearance. They were just two more criminals, two entrepreneurs with enough connections to offer a special service to the whores in their territory. Yes, the prostitutes would still have to kick money back to the partners, but they would not have to fear the brutality of a pimp trying to squeeze the last dime out of their pussies. And they could quit the life whenever they wanted to.

  Of course, aside from getting their message out on the street, Cecil’s mention of the vehicle, especially of the license plate, caught both their attentions. Ordinarily, cops need a warrant to search a car or a truck. Unless, the Supreme Court ruled four or five years ago, the driver or the vehicle is cited for a violation of the traffic code. Any violation. A frayed driver’s license, depending on the defense lawyer, is good enough, as are dirty license plates or a broken headlight.

  It was after this ruling came down that certain police officers, in their zeal for aggressive law enforcement, began to carry small, hard objects, like blackjacks, the purpose of which was to crack a headlight or a taillight and thus validate the magical phrase “probable cause.”

  And ten kilos is a lot of coke for a New York City detective. Especially if it doesn’t come as a result of twenty men working for six months. Task forces are tough on budgets. In Moodrow’s estimation, ten kilos would be good for a commendation, even a promotion. Waiting for the next phone call, he and Tilley decided that Cecil’s tip was reliable enough for Moodrow to pass it personally to a friend of his in Midtown South, a cop named Patterson. Tilley’s job was to call it in, complete with time and license plate, to the same detective. An informant dropping a dime for reasons unknown. Patterson would record the phone call, as good detectives are prone to do, and it would give him and his backup a legitimate reason to be in the neighborhood when the van arrived.

  The scheme wasn’t foolproof by any means. A good lawyer, a Barry Slotnick, for instance, would make mincemeat out of the conveniently-broken headlight, but Cecil’s nemesis, Elio, would sit in the cell until he made bail. If he made bail. And the loss of ten kilos of cocaine would probably be sufficient to curtail the gang’s dreams of expansion, at least long enough for Cecil’s original protection to recover.

  The rest of the evening passed in similar fashion. First a phone call, then a visit, kept as brief as possible, while Moodrow spread the word about Blue Thunder. Occasionally, they received tidbits of information, though nothing so promising as Cecil’s revelations.

  In the course of the night, Tilley discovered that there were two kinds of soldiers in Moodrow’s information network. Most of them were “rats” in the best B movie tradition; furtive, ashamed of themselves, afraid of Moodrow and of Tilley and of their reputation. In each of these cases, Tilley found himself playing the “bad” cop. He fixed them with his hardest look, the one he’d used when staring into the eyes of an opponent while the referee mumbled something about “clean breaks.” He gave it to them from the moment they entered until Moodrow dismissed them with a contemptuous wave of his hand. If they wanted to be afraid of him, that was fine.

  There were a few, though, who sauntered in, as proud as Cecil or Lucille. This breed didn’t inform out of fear. They did it for money, or to get even, or to put a competitor out of business. In a way, they had a right to flaunt their bravery. They were playing a dangerous game. They had to reveal their own affairs in order to convince Moodrow of the validity of their information, which marked them. And because they informed for profit, he was not obliged to protect them if they were busted.

  It was seven o’clock before Tilley headed uptown. He was taking the car home regularly by then, because, living in the precinct, Moodrow really didn’t have much use for it. The freedom from mass transit made things easier, but he was dead tired by the time he parked in front of his building, even though he knew he was coming home to a house full of energy. It was one thing when he was only sharing the place with Susanna. Hell, she was already enroute to work. In the presence of guests, he would be forced to smile when all he wanted was oblivion.

  Jeanette and Rose greeted him at the door. Rose’s look, as she appraised the condition of his eyes, told him that she understood how he felt. Jeanette’s look, on the other hand, revealed greater expectations and they did one more story before Jim Tilley got into bed. The last thing he remembered before he dropped off was Rose asking the children to keep it quiet.

  They must have complied, because when he woke up, it was after four. Which was fine, because the task force was out there doing all the legwork and Moodrow wouldn’t need him before seven or eight. He stumbled out of bed, groggy and a little disoriented. For a second he flashed back to waking after late tours in Fort Greene, then he remembered that he’d been dreaming of Lucille, Cecil’s partner. The previous night, despite Moodrow’s assertion that she was gay, she’d sat facing him, then crossed and recrossed her legs twenty times in the course of the interview. Each time flashing the crotch of her metallic silver panties. Tilley had always been a “morning” man and Lucille’s image was, in its proper course, replaced by the randy notion that Rose was in the next room and just maybe the kids were asleep or maybe they were visiting or maybe they’d been kidnapped by space aliens and carried off to Jupiter.

  He shrugged into his robe, a black velvet bathrobe with red piping along the pockets, and went out to look. They were there, of course, sitting on the rug in the living room. The sun was pouring through a southern window, illuminating thick, green drapes and casting a rectangle of color over the three of them as they huddled over a well-developed game of Monopoly. Lee was complaining about the expense of a turn’s stay on Pennsylvania Avenue, which Jeanette owned. His argument ran along the lines of “she always gets the greens.” Rose put her arm around Lee and began to explain the bit about losing being part of life. Lee had been evading this reality for a long time, so he’d heard the lecture before. Still, the soft voices, the three of them framed in afternoon light, the touch of Rose’s arm on her son’s flesh…it hurt him to watch it. Hurt him because he was forced to acknowledge his love for Rose and because he felt he might never enter the cocoon that held her family together.

  “Hi, guys,” he said cheerfully, as men are prone to do on such occasions. But he didn’t wait for a response. Though he got a chorus of greetings, he kept on going down the hall into the bathroom where he spent the next half hour making his body socially acceptable. It was while he was standing in front of the mirror, admiring the finished product, that the phone rang. Rose must have picked it up, because she called Moodrow’s name through the door and asked him if he wanted to call back. Instead of answering, Tilley opened the door, checked for the children, then gave her a quick peck on the lips.

  “I’ll get it,” he said, striding back down the hall. “I’ll take it in the kitchen.”

  Tilley was still horny as hell when he picked up the receiver, but he knew that Moodrow would not be calling unless it was important. Tilley was hoping Moodrow had heard from one of his people when he barked, “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “Where are you now?” Moodrow responded. His voice was unusually quiet.<
br />
  “Mars. Where do ya think I am?”

  “I mean, are you where Rose can see you?”

  Tilley’s heart dropped down into his gut. “Yeah.”

  “Well, keep your face together when I tell you this. Levander paid a visit to his mom’s last night. I want you to get down to the projects right away.”

  Tilley smiled and kept the smile plastered to his face. “Anything else?”

  “Nobody’s dead, though Marlee looks half way to it. I want you to come down here and listen to what they have to say.”

  “Half an hour. At the site.”

  After they hung up, Rose came out of the bedroom. The stricken look on her face gave away the fact of her eavesdropping on the extension. “I did this,” she said. “It’s because I ran away.”

  “Rose, please…” Tilley reached out for her, but she slid away from his hands and slapped him hard. Slapped him contemptuously.

  “You and the great Moodrow. Will you wait until he kills us all before you shoot him?” The kids had come down the hallway and were standing, one against either hip. The clan had come together, as distrustful as the first time they’d laid eyes on Detective Tilley.

  “I said I could keep you safe and I did,” Tilley said, stepping away from them. “I can’t make miracles.”

  “You should have put him away ten years ago.”

  “Ten years ago I was in high school.”

  She tossed her hair back over her shoulder. “Nobody’s ever responsible,” she said. “How can that be? How can no one ever be responsible? You go help your partner do justice, Jim Tilley. Do justice for me and my children. Do justice for those dead cops. Do justice for Marlee and Louise. Do it, Tilley. Do it for yourself.”

  21

  WHEN THE BELL RANG, Moodrow stood up and walked through the living room, pushing the debris aside with his feet. He’d been waiting patiently for more than an hour, having chased out the forensics squad as soon as he’d arrived. There was no doubt of the identity of this particular perpetrator, and no need for further evidence.