January 9
Stanley Moodrow, sitting at his kitchen table, a cup of coffee in one hand and the Daily News in the other, was more than annoyed. It wasn’t the events of the last few days that had him going. He’d become reconciled to making the rounds with Salvatore Patero. Not that he actually approved (or even that he was committed to the money), but there was nothing he could do about it. Not in the short term, at least. The cards had been dealt and now he had to play them. It was like the sky falling on Chicken Little. The smart thing was examine the pieces, then do what you had to do.
He’d learned that lesson the hard way. He’d been fifteen when his father died quickly, twenty-three when his mother died slowly. Whatever he’d meant to say to his father or been afraid to say to his mother was going to go forever unsaid. For a few minutes, at his mother’s wake, he’d thought he might die himself. Just stop where he was.
“If you can get through this, you can get through anything.” That’s what he told himself. And the truth was that compared to sitting on that folding chair by the coffin while friends and relatives murmured their condolences, his problems with Sal Patero and Pat Cohan were less than two piles of dogshit on the sidewalk. No, what bothered Stanley Moodrow as he dawdled over his breakfast was the weather.
It was cold and windy. Again. Looking out of his bedroom window as he’d dressed, Moodrow had followed the hunched backs of workingmen as they made their way to buses and subways. Checking the weather was a habit he’d picked up as a patrolman. It was funny, in a way. The newspapers wrote about cops all the time. Likewise the novelists. And while the reporters were mostly critical and the novelists full of bull, neither of them seemed to understand the physical aspects of the job.
On cold days, if you managed to keep moving, you’d stay warm from your neck to your ankles. Above and below, you froze no matter what you did. Your ears and feet would hurt for the first hour, then go numb and stay that way until you finished your tour. Which wasn’t so bad until you came back to the station house and thawed out. On really cold days, the pins and needles would have more than one cop dancing in front of his locker.
The summer wasn’t much better-you sweated all day and tended your rashes at night. By the time the dog days hit, your feet and armpits were permanently inflamed, the powder you put on in the morning was white greasy mud by noon, your balls were floating in a lake of sweat by ten o’clock. What got you through the discomfort was nothing more than dogged persistence. You learned to accept the discomfort like an ox accepting the yoke.
The telephone interrupted Moodrow’s daydreams and he left the kitchen to pick it up. He was expecting to hear Sal Patero’s voice, but found his fiancee on the line instead.
“Stanley,” she said, almost whispering, “I only have a minute, but I have to talk to you.”
“Are you at home?”
“No, I’m at Sacred Heart. I just went to confession.”
“And?” The next part wasn’t going to be any better than the weather and Moodrow knew it.
“What we did the other day, Stanley? It was beautiful, even if it was technically a sin.”
“Did you tell that to Father Grogan?”
“It was Father Ryan. And no, I didn’t. I told him that I knew I’d hurt Jesus and I was sorry for that. Which I am, Stanley. But the important thing is I had to promise not to do it again. You know that I had to.”
Moodrow did know it. In order to make a true confession, in order to receive forgiveness, you had to do two things. You had to be truly repentant and you had to believe that you wouldn’t go out and sin again. Moodrow had been all of fourteen when he’d realized that he was going to do certain things over and over again. No matter how many oaths he took in the confessional. He’d handled this insight by avoiding confession. Compounding the felony was what the lawyers called it.
“All right,” he muttered. “I admit it. But you’re also expected to avoid ‘the near occasions of sin.’ Does that mean we can’t see each other until the wedding?”
“You don’t have to be cruel, Stanley. You’re a Catholic, too.”
“I’m a phony Catholic, like ninety-nine percent of all the Catholics in the world.” He hesitated a moment. “Look, I’m sorry, Kate. I don’t want to attack your faith. The other day … well, if I gotta wait another six months, I’ll wait. That’s all there is to it.”
“Actually, there’s something else, Stanley. I probably shouldn’t have gone to Father Ryan. I should have gone to Father Grogan, because he’s a lot easier. Maybe I felt guilty. I don’t know, but it’s done now. Father Ryan wants me to tell my father. As part of the penance.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Don’t take the Lord’s name, Stanley.”
As he made his way to the 7th Precinct, Moodrow was hoping against hope. He knew he was dealing with a fifty-fifty proposition at best. Maybe Kathleen wasn’t a religious fanatic, but she did believe in sin and the ritual of forgiveness. Which always included a penance. Most penances consisted of saying a rosary or lighting a candle, but apparently Father Ryan had considered Kate’s sin to be especially evil.
What Moodrow had managed to do, after much persuasion, was to make Kathleen agree to go back to Father Ryan and beg for mercy. At least that postponed the confrontation. Maybe, if he had a few days to think about it, he’d come up with a better plan. One thing for sure, he wasn’t going to take a lot of shit from Pat Cohan. A rabbi was one thing-every up-and-comer in the Department had a rabbi-but Moodrow didn’t figure he needed a master. He had no intention of playing the monster to Pat Cohan’s Doctor Frankenstein.
He nodded to several uniformed cops inside the 7th Precinct’s lobby, then quickly made his way to the detectives’ squad room. Once again, the detectives working at their desks ignored him altogether. Moodrow had already stopped hoping that the cold shoulder was some kind of ritual. The truth was they resented the hell out of him.
Patero’s door was open when Moodrow approached. There were two detectives sitting next to the Lieutenant’s desk. Moodrow stopped for a moment, not quite knowing his place.
“Stanley, come in.”
Patero was smiling, so, whatever was going on, it couldn’t be all bad. Moodrow walked through the door and nodded to the suits. “Morning,” he said.
“Stanley, this is Pete O’Brien.” Patero jerked his chin at a tall, beefy cop. “And this here is Mack Mitkowski.”
Mitkowski was small and wiry. His face was all flat planes except for a nose that seemed to jump out of his skull. He stared at Moodrow through dark blank eyes. “Whatta ya say, Stanley? How’s it hangin’?”
Patero interrupted before Moodrow could reply. “We’re gonna take a piece of slime off the streets today, Stanley. Ya know the guy they call the Playtex Burglar?”
“I know what he’s done, but we’ve never actually been introduced.”
The Playtex Burglar had been breaking into one or another of the small clothing stores clustered near Orchard and Delancey for the past six months. As far as Moodrow was concerned, he was strictly small-time, even if he was miraculously successful. What made him interesting to the cops (as well as a minor sensation in the newspapers) was the fact that in addition to a few decent suits and coats, he always grabbed several pieces of intimate lady’s apparel. Lace bras, silk panties, a black shortie nightgown, a full-length slip. At first, the detectives who’d picked up the beef had assumed he was taking them home to his wife or his girlfriend. But as they’d gotten deeper into his m.o., they’d realized that he usually left a small pile of rejects in front of a full-length mirror.
“Well,” Patero continued, “we got the little prick. Tell him, Mack.”
“Piece of cake,” Mack Mitkowski said. “He must’ve lost his regular fence, because last night he approached someone else for the first time. A new fence. This someone else (who I ain’t gonna name) looks just like a rat, but he sings like a canary. He bought the whole load, then called me to come down and take a look at it. It matches with what went outta Kaufman’s loft two days ago. The scum’s name is Victor Zayas, a Puerto Rican. He lives on Avenue D, across from the projects. Works two blocks from here in the kitchen at Ratner’s.”
Patero shook his head. “Imagine. A spic who wears lace panties. Whatta ya think’s gonna happen to him when he goes upstate? Think he’ll be the belle of the ball?”
Moodrow started to laugh, then noticed that Mitkowski and his partner had maintained their neutral expressions.
“Mack and Pete are gonna toss the spic’s apartment,” Patero continued.
“We’re gonna go over to Ratner’s and bring him into the house. See if we can persuade him to own up to his foul deeds.”
Questions began to form in Moodrow’s mind, questions he was smart enough not to ask. First, he wanted to know if they had a warrant to search the apartment. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be able to use what they found in court. And they probably didn’t have a warrant, because if they did, they’d wait to see what they came up with before approaching Zayas. What Mitkowski was doing was protecting his informant. Or maybe the informant would never agree to testify in an open courtroom.
It amounted to the same thing. All they had was a name. That wasn’t the same as proof or evidence or anything else that would stand up in court, even if they were sure Zayas was guilty. Of course, they could put Zayas under surveillance for the next month. They could try to catch him in the act. But it would take six experienced cops to maintain round-the-clock observation. Six cops times thirty days equals a hundred and eighty payroll days which equals eight or nine thousand dollars. Maybe the captain of the 111th out in Bayside would approve the expense. Bayside was a nice, safe, low-crime neighborhood. But the 7th saw crimes involving knives and guns every day, not to mention a flourishing heroin trade. Captain McElroy wasn’t likely to invest that kind of money in the Playtex Burglar. The whole game hinged on getting Zayas to confess.
Moodrow stepped back to allow Mitkowski and O’Brien to get to the door. He sat down as soon as they were gone.
“Cheer up, Stanley,” Patero said. “You’re gonna get your picture in the papers today.”
“What am I gonna do, kill somebody?”
“What you’re gonna do,” Patero said, “is bust the Playtex Burglar. I already called the reporters. They’ll get the cameras down here whenever I give the word.”
More questions to which Moodrow knew the answers. But this time he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
“How is it my bust? Mitkowski was the one who nailed him.”
“It’s your bust, because I say it’s your bust.” Patero’s voice was sharper. He couldn’t understand why Moodrow didn’t just play the game. It was a gift, this arrest, and as far as Patero was concerned, Moodrow should be grateful.
“I hear what you’re sayin’, Sal, but what I’m seeing is that these guys hate my guts. I’m supposed to be out there developing my own pack of rats. A detective’s only as good as his information. That’s what everybody says.”
“I thought we reached an understanding the other day.” Patero lit a cigarette and sucked in a cloud of smoke. He held it for a second, then let it drift out through both nostrils. “I’m tryin’ to cut down, but it only makes the ones I do smoke taste better.” He took another drag before returning to Moodrow.
“First of all, it doesn’t matter what Mitkowski and O’Brien think of you. They’re nice guys and halfway decent detectives, but they’re not going anywhere and they’re not gonna complain. Second, them and everybody else in the squad would give their right arms to be where you are now. Third, what you’re gonna learn, startin’ today, is how to do something more important than beggin’ some slimeball for a name. You’re gonna become the Seventh’s liaison with the DA’s office. You’re gonna be the one who makes sure that all the evidence and all the paperwork is in order before a case goes to trial. Take my word for it, Stanley. You won’t believe what kind of assholes you’re gonna be dealin’ with. We had a detective, first grade, name of Galowitz who once sent a thirty-eight over to the lab without doing any paperwork at all. Just dropped it off on his way home. Naturally, it turns out the thirty-eight was used in a robbery in which a homicide occurred. Before we can arrest the scumbag who owns the gun, he shows up with a lawyer. The judge threw out the thirty-eight at a preliminary hearing and the perpetrator never went to trial. I’ve been asking the captain to give me a full-time assistant for the last two years. Just when I gave up hope, you dropped into my lap.”
Victor Zayas didn’t make any fuss when Sal Patero and Stanley Moodrow showed up in Ratner’s kitchen. He didn’t even glance at the badge Patero flashed.
“What do you want?”
“We want ya to come over to the precinct and model a pair of panties for us,” Patero hissed. “Black silk panties. Trimmed with lace.”
Zayas’s face dropped through the floor. Scared shitless was the way Moodrow read it. When Patero put on the cuffs, Zayas began to tremble, a small, skinny kid made almost ghostly by his fear.
They marched him back to the 7th, letting the neighborhood get a good look at him. The idea, as Patero had explained it, was to break him down, then give him a way out. Most of the process would take place in a basement interrogation room, but it didn’t hurt to begin at the beginning. Zayas was now in the hands of the police. They could hold him for seventy-two hours without charging him. More than enough time to do what had to be done. Moodrow didn’t think the kid would last through the morning.
“All right, punk, welcome to your new home.” Patero pushed open the door to a small room and shoved Zayas inside. The only piece of furniture in the room was an armless wooden chair. The chair was bolted to the floor. “If ya want room service, I’m afraid ya gotta yell. We ain’t got around to installing telephones. Not that it matters. The filet mignon is shit here anyway.” He shoved Zayas into the chair, then cuffed his wrists and ankles to the chair’s legs. “Comfy?”
“What are you gonna do?” Zayas asked.
“We just wanna see what kind of panties you’re wearing,” Moodrow said. He noted Patero’s approving grin, then loosened Zayas’s belt and yanked his corduroys down. “Boxers.” He shook his head in disgust.
“Why are you doing this?”
“You tell us,” Patero said.
“I want a lawyer. I’m entitled to a lawyer.”
“He talks pretty good for a spic. Don’t he, Stanley?”
“My grandfather came here in nineteen oh-three. I know my rights. I want a lawyer.”
“All right, already.” Patero raised his hand defensively. “Don’t get hot. We’ll go out and find you a lawyer. You wait here.”
Patero led Moodrow into a small anteroom. He closed the door, then turned out the overhead lights. Zayas was clearly visible through a glass panel, though what Zayas saw, when he looked at the glass, was himself, handcuffed to a chair.
“You’re gonna be the good cop, Stanley,” Patero said. “After Mitkowski and O’Brien get through with him. You know what to do?”
“I’ve seen it done, but I’ve never done it.”
“Yeah, well, ordinarily I wouldn’t expect ya to bring it off. I’d let ya watch a few more times, before ya tried it yourself. But this Zayas is a punk. We pulled his jacket this morning and he came up clean. Just wait until the boys soften him up, then go in and hold his hand.” Patero took a sheet of paper out of his inside jacket pocket and tossed it over to Moodrow. “Here’s a list of burglaries we’d like him to cop out on. Addresses and dates.”
Moodrow scanned the list quickly. “These go back more than two years. I thought the Playtex Burglar’s only been working for the last six months?”
“First rule of law enforcement, Stanley,” Patero grinned. “The system runs on success. Ya gotta clear a certain percentage of the crimes committed in your command. It’s a competition. One precinct against another. Second rule of law enforcement: everybody cheats. When I first got appointed to the detectives, I was stationed up in the Two twenty-second. In the east Bronx. The captain there had a motto: ‘If it ain’t dead, it ain’t a felony.’ We had the lowest felony rate in the city for six years running.”
“Some of these burglaries were big,” Moodrow insisted. “This one on Division Street netted thousands of dollars in furs. You put that on the kid, he’s gonna go upstate for a long time.”
Patero advanced until his face was six inches from Moodrow’s chest. He looked ridiculous-like a chicken confronting a turkey-but he was much too angry to notice. “What’re you supposed to be? Sir fucking Galahad? Why don’t ya just give me your gold shield? Take it out right now and hand it over. I’ll get the captain to put ya back directing traffic for kids comin’ outta school. That way you’ll sleep good at night.”
The door opened before Moodrow could respond. O’Brien, carrying a paper bag, entered the room, followed by Mitkowski. If either of them noticed anything wrong, they didn’t show it.
“Home run,” O’Brien announced, emptying the bag onto a metal table. “Panties, slips, bras, nylons, garter belts. This one’s my favorite.” He held up a blue silk peignoir.
“He livin’ with a broad?” Patero asked.
“Negative, Sal. No dresses, coats, shoes.”
“Cosmetics?”
“A ton of it. Perfume, too.”
Patero stepped away from Moodrow. He was smiling again. “Might as well get to it.”
“I had a great idea on the way over,” Mitkowski said. “Ain’t that right, Pete.”
“Great idea,” O’Brien admitted.
Mitkowski took off his jacket, tie and shirt, then slipped into the peignoir. “Whatta ya think?” Mitkowski was small enough to button the peignoir, but his chest, covered with wiry black hair, somehow ruined the effect.
O’Brien took a scarred nightstick off the top of a filing cabinet and began to twirl it. In his expert hands, it spun like a yo-yo. “Just in case the punk ain’t impressed with Mack’s charms.”
Patero flipped on the intercom as soon as O’Brien and Mitkowski were in the room with Zayas. “I’m gonna take off, now. I got some paperwork in my office needs takin’ care of. You stay here. Do whatever you gotta do. One thing, though. You fuck it up, I’m takin’ it back to Pat Cohan. I’m gonna tell him I can’t work with you. I’m gonna say, ‘You asked me to teach Stanley about the Department, but Stanley don’t wanna learn. Whatta ya gonna do about it?’ ”
He left without waiting for an answer and Moodrow turned his attention to the interrogation room. The cops in the 7th called this room the Canary Cage, because so many suspects, caught within its walls, had been induced to sing whatever song the cops wanted to hear. Victor Zayas, however, was almost certainly a punk with no one larger than himself to give up. Which meant there was only one way out of the Canary Cage for the Playtex Burglar-his signature at the end of a confession.
Moodrow watched Mitkowski strut across the room, swinging his hips as he went. “And thith design,” he said, “is bound to get hith attention. All hith attention.” He sashayed over to Zayas and sat on the small man’s lap. “Whatta think, Victor? Do I look the part? Or would ya like to show us how ya do it for ya boyfriend?”
“I want a lawyer,” Zayas announced. “I know my rights.”
O’Brien stepped forward, grabbed Zayas’s nose between his thumb and forefinger, then twisted sharply. “I don’t wanna hear that shit. Not from no faggot like you.”
Zayas tried to pull away, but there was no place to go. The act was meant to remind him of his helplessness and O’Brien continued to drive the message home until Zayas cried out in pain. Then, seemingly satisfied, O’Brien strolled over to the far corner and picked a dusty telephone book off the floor.
“Did that bad, bad polithman hurt you, Vickie?” Mitkowski crooned.
“I want a lawyer.” Zayas was near to tears. “I’m entitled to a lawyer.”
“Oh Vickie, Vickie, Vickie.” Mitkowski was having the time of his life. When the boys in the squad room heard about this one, they’d buy his drinks for the next month. “Why are you rejecting me, Vickie? You know how thenthitive I am. Is it because I’m a fucking faggot? That doesn’t make me a bad perthon. I could thuck every cock in Manhattan and still be a good perthon. I mean it’s what’s in your heart that counth. Ithn’t it?”
This time Zayas kept his mouth shut. He sat in the chair, his eyes closed, clearly determined to ride out the storm. Of course, Zayas wasn’t the first suspect ever to demand a lawyer. Suspects were entitled to speak with a lawyer before questioning, assuming they knew their rights and requested one.
Interrogating officers usually divided knowledgeable suspects into two categories: hardened ex-cons and well-informed citizens. Most of the ex-cons would take a beating and laugh in the cop’s face. Having been through the game before, they knew that a beating only lasts for a few days, but prison goes on for years and years. Well-informed citizens, on the other hand, tended to see their right to a lawyer as an abstraction and the pain of a beating as very, very concrete.
“All right,” Mitkowski said, getting up. “I know when I’m not wanted.” He took off the peignoir, draped it over Zayas’s shoulders, then buttoned it under his throat. “Here, it looks better on you, anyway. Pete, gimme the phone book.”
O’Brien, standing behind Zayas, passed the phone book over to Mitkowski. “You gonna make a call, Mack?”
“Yeah, I’m gonna call Victor’s conscience.” He took the phone book and carefully dusted it off. “Wouldn’t wanna get ya perm all dirty, would we, Victor?” He paused, but Zayas didn’t answer. “What we’re gonna do now is for your own good. Because what I noticed here is that ya got very bad posture and how could ya be a model if ya posture’s bad? So what we’re gonna do is put the phone book on the top of ya head. Your job is to keep it there, keep ya neck and head straight. Believe me, this is great trainin’, Vickie. Course, ya could move and let the book fall down, but if ya do, I’m gonna take out my cock and make you suck it.” Mitkowski’s voice suddenly hardened. “You understand me, faggot? You understand what I’m tellin’ ya? Don’t try me, ’cause I never bluff.”
“I want …”
Mitkowski slapped Zayas’s face, a quick, sharp blow that would have knocked Zayas down if he hadn’t been handcuffed to the chair.
“No more bullshit about a lawyer. Not one fuckin’ word. Whatta ya think, we’re playin’ around here?”
“All right,” Zayas muttered.
“That’s better.” Mitkowski laid the phone book on Zayas’s head, balancing it carefully. “Very good, Vickie. See how ya holdin’ ya shoulders? And how ya neck forms a straight line? Just hold it for another minute and I’ll give you a nice reward.”
The reward turned out to be O’Brien using the nightstick like an axe, bringing it in a long smooth arc, from behind his knees to straight over his head to the top of the Manhattan phone book. The crack was sharp enough to make Mitkowski wince. Zayas, on the other hand, did nothing for a moment. Then he screamed, a long howl so elemental it was neither male nor female. It filled the room, as solid as the walls and the floor, a single note, a song of sorrow as much as pain, freezing the two detectives until it finally died out. Until Zayas, head bent, tears streaming down his cheeks, began to sob uncontrollably.
“Look what ya did,” Mitkowski said calmly. “Ya moved ya noggin and the phone book fell on the floor.” He picked it up, then grabbed Zayas’s face and lifted his head. “Now what I’m gonna do is put this phone book on ya head again. I know ya first instinct is gonna be to shake it off. Hey, it’s only natural. But ya should think about this. If there ain’t no phone book up there, then there ain’t nothin’ between ya faggoty skull and Pete’s nightstick. See what I mean?”
Mitkowski didn’t wait for an answer. He balanced the phone book on top of Zayas’s trembling head, then stepped back and nodded to O’Brien who once again brought the club through its arc. This time Zayas didn’t scream. He slumped forward, his eyes fluttering, nearly unconscious.
Zayas would have remained that way for a long time, preferring the blank dizziness to the reality awaiting him, but the sight of Stanley Moodrow crashing through the door overrode any common sense he might have had.
“What the fuck is goin’ on here?” Moodrow demanded.
“Jeez.” Even Mitkowski, who’d been expecting Moodrow’s entrance, was impressed. Like most of the cops in the 7th Precinct, he’d witnessed the Liam O’Grady fight.
“I asked you a question,” Moodrow repeated.
“Drop dead, Stanley,” O’Brien said. “We’re just doin’ our jobs.”
Moodrow strode across the floor and grabbed O’Brien’s lapel, yanking him in close. “What you are is a fucking animal, Pete. And what I am is an animal trainer. I want you out of here. You and that asshole dwarf you call a partner.”
“Take it easy. Take it easy.” O’Brien instinctively pushed back Moodrow’s chest. It was like pushing against a concrete pillar. “Jeez,” he said, echoing his partner’s sentiments.
“Look here, Stanley,” Mitkowski muttered, “this asshole belongs to us. You try to play the big hero, we’re gonna go to the lieutenant.”
Moodrow released O’Brien and turned to Mitkowski. “Go anywhere you want, Mack. As long as it’s out of here. And give me a key for those cuffs. Whatta ya think ya got here, public enemy number one?”
Mitkowski fished a key out of his pocket and threw it at Moodrow. “We’ll be back,” he announced.
“Don’t slam the door on your way out.”
Of course, they did slam the door. O’Brien slammed it as hard as he could and Moodrow had to wait for the crash to die down. When it was quiet in the room, he knelt beside Zayas and removed the handcuffs on the little man’s wrists and ankles.
“That feel better, Victor?” Moodrow asked.
Zayas nodded. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“What they did was wrong.” Moodrow went back into the anteroom and picked up a small table and a chair. He carried them back into the interrogation room and set them in front of Zayas. “How do you take your coffee, Victor? Milk and sugar? Light and sweet?”
Zayas stared at Moodrow, uncomprehending.
“Your coffee, Victor. How do you like it?”
“Black.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Moodrow reappeared a minute later with a steaming mug in his hands. He placed it in front of Zayas before sitting down. Carefully, almost reluctantly, he took out his ballpoint and his notebook. “You smoke, Victor?” he asked.
Stanley Moodrow sat at his kitchen table, an untouched bowl of Hormel chili (customized with strips of Kraft’s Sliced American) in front of him. He was trying to read the Daily News, the same edition he’d been reading before Kathleen’s call, but the stories seemed trivial, absurd. Albert Anastasia, the ultimate high-profile gangster, was in the headlines again. The reputed head of Murder, Inc., Anastasia had been gunned down in a barber’s chair the previous October. Ever since, publicity-seeking DAs and congressional committees had been dragging in one mobster after another for what they called ‘questioning.’ Now it was Meyer Lansky’s turn, Lansky and Sam Trafficante who were, according to the story, in Havana trying to buy the country of Cuba from its dictator, Fulgencio Batista.
Despite his best efforts, Moodrow kept asking himself the same question: what did Albert Anastasia and Meyer Lansky and the DA, Frank Hogan, have to do with what had happened in the Canary Cage? As Patero had predicted, the reporters had come to photograph Moodrow leading a handcuffed Playtex Burglar out of the 7th Precinct and into a waiting van. Would the story they printed have anything to do with what had gone on in that basement room? Would they, for instance, reflect Patero’s anger? Because he, Moodrow, had never taken Patero’s list out of his pocket. He’d simply written down whatever Zayas had said and had the kid sign on the bottom line.
Moodrow was honest enough to admit that he’d known about the game all along. His uncle had enlightened him before he’d entered the Academy. It was simple enough, really. The courts (the lower courts, at least) would admit any confession, no matter how it was obtained. The higher courts, assuming the convict had the money for an appeal, were as likely to reverse these convictions as not, but this meant less than nothing to the NYPD. As far as the cops were concerned, cases were cleared the minute a conviction was obtained, no matter what happened two years down the line. Of course, clearing cases wasn’t the only way up for an ambitious precinct commander, but failing to clear as many cases as your competitors was a sure way down.
Maybe, Moodrow thought, it was like your first murder scene. You never forgot the first one-it dug under your skin like the teeth of a bloodsucking tick-but, after a while, you simply got used to the violence. After a while, you could stand there, inhaling the coppery stink of drying blood, and chomp on your doughnut like a real veteran.
The doorbell rang before Moodrow could drag himself back to the Daily News. He got up, hoping against hope that it was Kathleen come to tell him that Father Ryan could go to hell. But it wasn’t Kathleen. It was his neighbor, Greta Bloom.
“Good evening, Stanley,” she announced, marching past him into the apartment.
“Why don’t you come in, Greta?”
“I’m already in, thank you.” She turned back to the door. “Rosaura, please. Don’t stay in the hallway. You’ll get a draft.”
The middle-aged woman who stepped into the apartment was so large that Moodrow couldn’t believe that he hadn’t noticed her in the hallway, had nearly shut the door in her face.
“Stanley,” Greta said, “this is your neighbor, Rosaura Pastoral. Rosaura, this is our policeman, Stanley Moodrow.”
Our policeman? Moodrow managed a nod despite his annoyance. He reminded himself that Greta had been his mother’s best friend, had nursed her through her illness. If it wasn’t for Greta Bloom, his mother would have spent the last six months of her life in a hospital.
“What could I do for you, Greta? Somebody lose a cat?”
“What you could do is ask us to sit down. And don’t be a wiseguy, Stanley. I told you a million times about that.”
“Greta, Mrs. Pastoral, please sit down.”
Then he remembered. A homicide on Pitt Street. A stiff named … Melenguez, that was it. Luis Melenguez. He was supposed to ask around, find out what happened.
Greta perched herself on the edge of the couch. “Nu, you shouldn’t bother with coffee and a nosh. It’s late and we won’t be staying long.”
“Gee, Greta, I was just about to create my world-famous onion dip.”
“Please, Stanley. This is serious business.”
Moodrow sat down and looked the two women over. Rosaura Pastoral looked to be about five foot eight. She weighed maybe a hundred and eighty pounds. Greta Bloom, tiny, nervous, fluttering like a parakeet, had never weighed more than a hundred pounds in her life.
“What it is,” Moodrow said, trying for a smile, “is I forgot all about it. I mean what you asked me the other day. Things got a little crazy in the precinct and I forgot to ask around.”
“He forgets a murder? How is this possible?”
How could he explain it? All the times he’d responded to a crime scene to find a DOA lying in a pool of blood. It was always gruesome, no doubt about that, but it had long ago ceased to be exotic.
“What could I say? I’m sorry.” What he wanted to do was get rid of them without listening to the harangue already showing in the expression on Greta’s face. “I’ll tell you what, Greta. As long as you brought Mrs. Pastoral with you, why don’t you let her tell me why she feels something’s wrong here. That way I’ll know what to ask when I go into the precinct tomorrow.”
Greta Bloom sniffed once. “That’s smart, Stanley. But I’d be happy you shouldn’t embarrass me again. If you’re not interested in doing a favor, you should come right out and say so.”
Moodrow turned to Rosaura Pastoral without answering. Now that she was sitting in front of him, he did recognize her. Maybe he’d seen her by the mailboxes or carrying a bag of groceries up the stairs. He couldn’t really remember and that was too bad, because there was a time when he could name every family in the building.
“Maybe you better tell me about it,” he said.
“Senor Moodrow,” Rosaura Pastoral spoke for the first time. Her voice was deep and slightly hoarse. “This thing happens the day after Christmas. My boarder, Luis Melenguez, goes out for the evening and he don’ come back. For five days I don’ hear nothing. Then someone tell me he is killed in a house on Peet Street.”
“Peet Street?”
“She means, Pitt Street,” Greta interpreted.
“I’m sorry for my English is no too good. I try to learn, but it comes very slow.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Moodrow said. “Just tell your story.”
“When I’m hearing this about Luis, I go to the police station and talk to the officer at the desk. He is sending me to a man in a suit, Detective Maguire. Detective Maguire is telling me the investigation is … progressing. Tha’ is the word he use. Progressing. Then I ask him why nobody come to see me. I am Luis’s landlady. He live in my home. Why nobody come to as’ me who is his friends? Who is his enemies? Ayyy, Dios mio, Detective Maguire get so angry. He say I don’ know nothin’ about it, so why don’ I go home and mind my own business. I do like he say, but no is right thing. I don’ think so.”
Moodrow took a minute before he responded. He’d been in the final stages of training for his bout with Liam O’Grady on December 26 and knew less than nothing about the murder. But the fact that more than two weeks had gone by without an arrest meant that, statistically, at least, the murder was unlikely to be cleared.
“You say that nobody came to interview you. Nobody?”
“No, Senor. I never hear from nobody abou’ this thing. Luis Melenguez is only in this country six months. He leaves his wife and his children in Puerto Rico to come here. Luis never hurt nobody in his life. In his country, he is a … I don’ know the word for this.”
“A peasant, Stanley,” Greta said. “And believe me, from peasants I have experience.”
The Department, Moodrow knew, cleared a high percentage of homicides, usually within the first forty-eight hours. And the way they cleared them was by investigating the people closest to the victim. Of course, there might be any number of reasons why Maguire hadn’t followed standard operating procedure, not the least of which was the distinct possibility that Rosaura Pastoral was lying through her teeth. But even if Rosaura was telling the truth, even if Maguire had no good reason for sitting on his hands, there remained the question of what he, Stanley Moodrow, could do about it.
“You should understand something here,” he said, more to Greta Bloom than Rosaura Pastoral. “I’m not the commissioner. There’s not much I can do.”
“Stanley, please, no one expects you should go out and make miracles. But also you should remember that Rosaura is your neighbor. She comes to you for help, because there’s no other place for her to go. The machers at the police station don’t have no use for a pisher like Rosaura Pastoral. Let me tell you a story so you should understand what I’m trying to say.”
“Please,” Moodrow groaned. Greta’s stories had a way of extending themselves through several generations.
“Stanley, make me a promise you’ll listen close and I swear I won’t be too long.”
“Keep it short and I’ll repeat it word for word.”
“Huh,” she snorted, “always with the smart mouth. One day you’ll get in trouble with a mouth like that.”
“One day?”
“When I came to this country,” she said, ignoring his response, “I was already thirty years old, a married woman with two children. This was in 1920. All my life before that I lived in a shtetl in Poland. A shtetl is a small village. For me, a goy was one of two things. A goy was a peasant with a club or a Cossack with a sword. Believe me, Stanley, I’m not exaggerating even a little bit. I saw plenty growing up-Jews beaten, robbed, killed. It was an expected thing. So, when I found out that my husband, who came here before me, was living in an apartment with a goy next door, I was so crazy I couldn’t talk.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
“Little by little, I learned there were goyim in the world who didn’t hurt Jews just because they were Jews. There were goyim who were neighbors, who helped you out when you were in trouble. This maybe sounds to you like nothing, but, for me, it was a revelation like even the prophets didn’t know. It changed my life and all my thinking. Rosaura is like me when I first came to America. She don’t know a soul. She don’t know how things work. But she’s my neighbor and she’s your neighbor, too. Just like her boarder, Luis Melenguez. From my thinking, when a neighbor asks for a favor, you do what you can. That’s how we survived in 1920 and that’s how we survive today.”
“What’s the favor, Greta? What exactly does she want me to do?”
“Stanley, don’t be a schmuck. First you should find out what’s going on. Then you’ll think of something.”