Damaged Goods (37 page)

Ten minutes later, Moodrow and Gadd were parked in front of the Monroe, a small, decrepit hotel, directly across the street from the ancient tenement that housed Jilly Sappone’s apartment. The Monroe, like a number of similar hotels on the northern end of the Upper West Side, was an SRO, a designation that allowed the city to pack it with homeless men. SRO stood for single room occupancy, a term which, some years before, had replaced the word “flophouse.”

Moodrow shut the engine down, put the key in his pocket. He was about to say something to Gadd, something about not knowing what to do next, when a security guard, tattered umbrella in hand, came out of the hotel and tapped at Gadd’s window.

“This here is a hotel loading zone,” he said after Gadd rolled down the window. “Y’all ain’t supposed to park here.” He squatted down, stared at Moodrow’s chiseled-stone expression for a few seconds, then added, “Unless y’all are cops.”

“We’re sorta like cops,” Gadd replied, “like the Monroe is sorta like a hotel.” She smiled brightly and held up a ten-dollar bill. “Being as there’s a bad element on this block, I was hoping you could watch the car for a little while. That and help us out with some information.”

The guard took the ten, put it in his shirt pocket, said, “Now I’m lookin’ after the car.”

Gadd came up with another ten, watched it go the way of the first. “That building across the street, they got a super in there?”

“Yeah, Polack name of Gregory. Lives in the basement. You hurry, you can catch him sober. The boy’s a friend of mine and I know he don’t drink much before noon.”

“That’s nice to hear. You think you might wanna do your friend a favor, knock on his door, get him to come out to the car? I say it’s a favor, because we’re gonna take care of him.”

The guard thought it over for a minute, then shook his head. “I ain’t sposed to leave the hotel. My boss wouldn’t like it. Probly give me hell.”

“Yeah, but when was the last time your boss paid you twenty bucks for ten minutes work?”

“There is that, now,” the man admitted. “There is that.”

Once he’d made up his mind, the security guard wasted no time. He trotted across the street, pulled open the apparently unlocked door, and disappeared inside. A few minutes later, he emerged with a short, squat balding man in tow. The man, lacking umbrella and coat, jumped into the backseat without any preliminary conversation.

“You’re Gregory?” Moodrow turned in the seat, extending his hand. “My name’s Moodrow.”

“Name is Gregory,” the man admitted, giving Moodrow’s hand a cautious shake.

“We’re interested in a pair of tenants, Gregory. You think you could help us out?” Moodrow held up a twenty, but didn’t offer it.

“That is depending on who is tenants. Gregory does not tell tales on his friends.”

Moodrow looked at Gadd, tried to warn her with his eyes. In his experience, white immigrants, especially those from Eastern Europe, hated to be questioned by female cops.

“Fair enough, Gregory. I wouldn’t rat on my friends either.” He finally passed over the twenty. “The two men I’m looking for live in Apartment 3C. They moved into the building a short time ago.”

“Gone, now.” The super, a triumphant gleam rising into his tiny, ice blue eyes, pocketed the twenty. “I have not seen them …” He ticked the days off on the fingers of his left hand. “Three days I have not seen them. This morning when I mop hall, no sound is in the apartment.”

“Are they coming back?”

Gregory shrugged. “Rent is paid, but they no tell me nothing.”

“I guess they wouldn’t,” Moodrow admitted.

“Tenants talk to super about leaky faucets, not traveling plans.” He started to open the door, then jerked to a stop when Moodrow held up another bill, this one a fifty. “One more thing I can do for you?” he asked.

“You got a key for that apartment?”

Gregory’s mouth said, “For this I lose job,” but his eyes never left the greenback in Moodrow’s hand.

“Fifteen minutes, Gregory. We’re not gonna take anything. We just wanna have a look around. If you want, you can stay with us the whole time.”

“You no take nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“What happen if tenants come back?”

“Well, Gregory, if that should happen, I advise you to locate the nearest closet and get your ass inside.”

“F
LATS ARE FURNISHED,” GREGORY
explained as he led the way up to Jilly Sappone’s third-floor apartment. “Tenants are mostly students from University of Columbia. This is why I remember new tenants even if I see only them one time when they are moving in. I think students these are not; these are trouble. Then they are not showing themselves after the moving, but I hear TV set made very, very loud when I sweep.
Sesame Street
and the Barney dinosaur.” He stopped, turned, patted his chest proudly. “Every single day I sweep floors. Twice times each week is mopping.”

Though the paint on the walls was faded, the finish on the wooden banister chipped and darkened by sweat, the stairs were clean, the hallways free of graffiti. Moodrow, who felt some comment was in order, nodded thoughtfully, said, “Sounds like you own the place.”

The super responded with a sad shake of the head. “Some time,” he announced before turning away, “it will be.”

They resumed their journey in silence. Moodrow, as they trudged upward, felt his gut tighten, the sensation familiar though not terribly pronounced. Like any other cop, he’d prowled tenement stairways and project hallways on a daily basis. No matter how benign his mission, he’d always felt like an intruder, like the natives might well decide to drive him off.

He turned to Gadd, started to remind her to be careful, but she’d already taken the S&W from her holster. As he watched, she slipped it into her jacket before tossing him a smile and a small shrug.

“Boy Scouts,” she muttered.

“Yeah, Be Prepared.” He unbuttoned his trench coat, freed his own revolver, was about to dump it into his pocket when Gregory stopped again.

“Door is open,” he announced. “Very strange. Tenants must to be returned.”

Moodrow, even as the hairs on the back of his neck rose to full alert, covered Gregory’s mouth with his left hand and literally pulled the man down the stairs and out of sight. Gadd, .38 in hand, kept her eyes on the open door as she backed her way down. When all three were out of sight on the second-floor landing, Moodrow spoke directly to the super.

“Gregory,” he whispered, “it’s time for you to go back to your apartment and call the cops.”

The super looked up at Moodrow through pleading, hangdog eyes. “Please,” he said, “my building.” His gaze traveled to the revolver in Gadd’s hand. “No to hurt my building please.”

Gadd shook her head. “Forget the goddamned building. Call 911, tell ’em you’ve got a burglary in progress.”

Gregory took a hesitant step, paused momentarily, then, his mind apparently made up, took the stairs two at a time. Gadd waited until he was out of sight before turning to Moodrow.

“It’s not Sappone,” she announced. “The lock’s been jimmied.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“The frame’s splintered.” She was about to add,
didn’t you notice?,
then changed her mind. “Maybe the FBI beat us to the punch.”

“And maybe Sappone lost his key.”

Gadd smiled. “One way to find out, Moodrow.” Her back pressed to the wall, she began to climb the stairs, pausing momentarily when they were high enough to see the apartment. As advertised, the door frame had been severely damaged.

From that point on, they did it by the book. Moodrow, pistol extended, covered Gadd’s quick, quiet move to within a foot of the doorway, then Gadd returned the favor. She kept the two-inch barrel of her .38 trained on a small circle in which she imagined Sappone’s head might appear, while Moodrow half ran down the hallway and into the apartment. Once inside, Moodrow stepped to his right and let his eyes follow the sights on his ancient S&W as they swept the room. Gadd followed an instant later, dropping into a shooter’s crouch as her revolver exactly and deliberately reversed the path of her partner’s.

Their first reaction, so immediate it seemed almost collective, was anger. The figure wrestling with a television set bolted to a wooden table at the far end of the room could not be Jilly Sappone. Male or female (viewed from behind, neither Moodrow nor Gadd was entirely sure), the tangled filthy hair, black T-shirt, torn greasy pants, and ulcerated feet proclaimed the glories of terminal drug addiction. Sappone, or so it seemed to both of them, had escaped once again.

“What the
fuck
do you think you’re doing?”

Gadd’s shout was cop-tough. Moodrow, standing a few feet away, nodded once, then whispered, “Still got the knack,” out of the corner of his mouth.

“Fear’ll do that to you,” Gadd returned. “Jog your memory.”

Then the mutt turned far enough to show himself male, muttering, “What, what, what, what.” Seemingly out of nowhere, a long, heavy-bladed hunting knife appeared in his trailing hand.

Moodrow looked into the man’s swollen eyes, noting the red veins, as sharply defined as those of a movie vampire, and the wildly dilated pupils. No hope, he said to himself. I’m looking at a crack junkie who’s been awake for days. He’s not gonna just assume the position. Not without encouragement. Meanwhile, the cops are on the way and my partner’s about to blow him into his next incarnation.

A series of individual facts jumped, one after another, into Moodrow’s consciousness. He and Gadd had no badges, no right to detain or make an arrest, no right to be in Sappone’s apartment, no right to be pointing their weapons at the creep on the other side of the room. Pulling the trigger, even if attacked, wouldn’t change any of the above, wouldn’t change them even a little bit, while actually provoking an attack (by, for instance, refusing the legal obligation to retreat) might be construed by a gung-ho prosecutor as out-and-out murder.

Moodrow took a deep breath, then stepped between his partner and the killer he couldn’t kill. The man hissed like a trapped rat, then retreated to the wall.

“I’ll cut you, motherfucker. I swear it; I’ll cut your fucking head off.” He pushed the knife farther out in front of him, held it with a shaking hand. The bunched ropey muscle in his neck jerked like a second pulse.

“For Christ’s sake, Moodrow, get out of the way.” Gadd’s voice was choked, almost desperate.

Moodrow took another step forward. “If you shoot me, Gadd,” he muttered, more to himself than to his partner, “I’m not gonna forget it.” He grabbed a dining room chair with his right hand and swung it with all his strength in a shoulder-high arc. Fortunately, the chair was made of wood and not metal; the glue binding the legs and stretchers was dry and cracked. It splintered on contact, yet still retained enough force to drive a spectral-thin crack junkie into the wall, to severely lacerate the back of his scalp and the bridge of his nose while breaking every bone in his left wrist.

Jane Lublin, the detective, third grade, who took Moodrow’s and Gadd’s statements, was not unsympathetic. Sure, she explained to Moodrow, the perp was a lowlife sleazeball crack junkie. No doubt about it. And, also true, Moodrow’s thirty-five years on the job entitled him to a certain measure of respect. Still, she didn’t see how she could finish her paperwork unless somebody told her what they were doing in that apartment.

“See, it’s like this,” she insisted, “my boss, Lieutenant O’Bannion, is a real tight ass. ‘Dot ’em and cross ’em’—that’s what he said when the brass sent him up here to whip us into shape after the scandals last year.” She leaned across the desk, spoke directly to Ginny Gadd. “I’m sure you can understand my position, Ms. Gadd. Even if I was to let you walk, it wouldn’t do you any good because I’d just have to go out and find you again. Meanwhile, the lou would fry my ass. Now, if you want a lawyer …”

Neither Moodrow nor Gadd wanted a lawyer. No, what they wanted to do was get the bullshit over with. Unfortunately, Gadd’s mention of Jilly Sappone’s name produced the opposite result. They were consigned to a bench at the back of the squad room, told to remain there for the duration.

“You try to take a hike,” Lublin explained, “I’m gonna put the both of you in cuffs and subject you to a strip search. You think I’m kidding, make your move.”

Three hours and a dozen sympathetic shrugs later, a still-cheerful Detective Lublin escorted them to Lieutenant O’Bannion’s office.

“I dare not cross this threshold.” She pushed the door open, glanced inside, then flinched. “I didn’t know you were so popular. Good luck.”

Moodrow stepped aside to let his partner go first. “Tell me something, Gadd,” he whispered as she went by, “would you be really pissed if I offered to testify against you in a court of law?”

Gadd stepped inside the room without responding. She took a quick look around before focusing on the uniformed officer seated behind the desk. The small office, a cubicle, really, matched her expectations nicely. The furniture was old and clean, the floor tiles faded and polished. Neatly arranged files covered every inch of the desktop. Various department directives, memos from above, surrounded a worn duty chart, a frame within a frame.

The room, she decided, neatly fit the personality Jane Lublin had ascribed to Lieutenant O’Bannion. It demonstrated a deeply held need to make order out of chaos, to jam the twenty-five thousand half-crazy cops who worked the streets into a mold designed by middle-aged deputy chiefs who never left their offices at One Police Plaza. Unfortunately, one of those same middle-aged, big-house silks, this one a full inspector, was sitting in Lieutenant O’Bannion’s chair, his head tilted slightly back, his eyes focused somewhere above her head.

“Moodrow.” The officer spoke without looking down.

“Inspector Cohen.”

Gadd watched Moodrow cross the room and take the inspector’s extended hand. For a second, she was sure he was going to kiss it, but then he turned slightly and she noted that his expression was wary.

“This is Inspector Cohen,” he said, apparently assuming the inspector would know her name.

Gadd nodded, received an answering nod in return. The fact that Cohen and Moodrow knew each other meant that their options were about to be sharply defined. Settling back, she told herself to keep her big mouth shut, to let the scene develop.