Forced Entry (26 page)

“From who?” Dunlap asked innocently.

“From the landlord.”

“And who’s the landlord?”

Rosenkrantz smiled and shook his head sadly. They were so stupid. “The Jackson Arms and the two adjoining buildings are owned by Bolt Realty Corporation.”

“That’s where you get your instructions? From a corporation?”

“Bolt Realty is represented by an attorney named William Holtz.”

“You got his address and phone number?” Dunlap asked.

“My secretary can give you that information.”

“Why don’t you get it for him?” Moodrow rose halfway out of his chair. “This is a police investigation, you asshole. Whatta ya think, you’re the fuckin’ mayor? Get the goddamn address.”

Dunlap smiled apologetically, gesturing wildly for Moodrow to sit back down. “Please, Al, if you could help us out, we’d appreciate it.”

Rosenkrantz, who had less desire to deal with his irascible secretary than Dunlap, flipped the pages of his Rolodex briefly, then handed a card bearing the address and phone number of William Holtz to Sergeant Paul Dunlap, who dutifully copied it into a small notepad.

“There’s one other thing,” Dunlap said. “You promised the tenants you were going to make some repairs. You know, the mailboxes and the front locks and the elevator? I tell you the truth, Al, I was scared myself when I used that elevator. It banged around like it was gonna fall apart any second…”

“While we’re talking,” Rosenkrantz interrupted.

“Pardon me?”

“All three of those things are being done while we’re talking. The crews are on the scene right now.” Rosenkrantz leaned across the desk to tap the back of Dunlap’s hand. He was sweating profusely, but he smiled his brightest smile, nonetheless. “Look, I admit things haven’t worked out as well as they could have, but I intend to keep the promises I’ve made. Now, for God’s sake, sergeant, you and the rest of the cops have to take some of the blame. You say there’s dealers and whores in the building? Then arrest them. Put them in jail. When I went to Bayside High School, they taught me that a body can’t be in two places at the same time. If you put them in jail, they won’t be in my buildings.”

The Manhattan offices of Holtz, Meacham, Meacham and Brount, located in the Kalikow Building at 101 Park Avenue, were everything the offices of Precision Management weren’t. The beige carpet pushed back against the soles of the feet like brand-new sixty-dollar Nikes. The brown burlap-covered walls sported a matched set of eight oil paintings depicting a fox hunt, from the huntsmen’s breakfast to the bloody corpse held triumphantly aloft. The receptionist, suitably young and beautiful, wore a necklace and bracelet of woven gold worth more than Moodrow’s entire wardrobe. Not quite sharp enough to make Dunlap and Moodrow for cops, she began to smile as soon as the door opened far enough to reveal the two visitors.

“May I help you?” Her low, musical voice was stunning, as carefully prepared as her tightly curled and slightly unkempt hair. Hearing it, Moodrow couldn’t help but wonder how rich a law firm had to be to afford such an ornament. If, he concluded as he asked for William Holtz, the woman had put as much effort into school as she’d evidently put into her appearance, he’d be talking to a neurosurgeon. Still, her equally musical, “Mr. Holtz, there are two policemen to see you,” failed to get them into the lawyer’s office. Instead, William Holtz, tall, tanned, and heavily muscled in his middle age, strode into the reception area to confront them publicly.

“Gentlemen?” Holtz, whose dark pinstriped suit, handmade by a Hong Kong Chinese with a showroom on East Broadway, had cost more than his receptionist’s jewelry, spoke sharply. He (a rare exception to the rule) accepted Moodrow and Dunlap’s respective IDs and began to examine them closely.

Moodrow waited patiently, at first, then stepped in close and looked directly into the lawyer’s eyes. He wasn’t operating under the delusion that he could intimidate the man—lawyers are exempt from all forms of police bullying and they know it—but Moodrow’s cop radar had begun to beep the minute Holtz had appeared. He could feel himself drawing closer to the end of the mystery and he wanted to let Holtz (and whoever he was fronting for) know that Stanley Moodrow was coming. That simple. That final.

“Which one of you is Sergeant Dunlap?” Though he maintained the eye contact, Holtz took a step back.

“Right here.”

“I’m very busy at the moment, sergeant. I’ve a client in my office and I’m late for a partners’ meeting. I’ve also had a long conversation with Mr. Rosenkrantz…”

“This’ll only take a few minutes,” Moodrow said.

“Mr. Moodrow,” Holtz returned, stepping around the larger man, “this conversation will be completed much more quickly if you stay out of it. I permit you to remain as a courtesy to Sergeant Dunlap, but I’m sure you realize that you’re a private citizen and have no standing here whatsoever.” He hesitated, allowing Moodrow the opportunity to challenge his statement, but Moodrow let it pass. “As I said, sergeant, I’ve just had a conversation with Mr. Rosenkrantz and I’m familiar with the condition of the property belonging to Bolt Realty.”

“We were wondering if you knew about that,” Dunlap said quietly. He was half in a daze. The furnishings had gone to his head, the receptionist had gone to his crotch, and William Holtz’s wardrobe had gone to his heart. Holtz, Meacham, Meacham and Brount was a long way from the Elks Club.

“Wonder no longer, sergeant. I have absolute confidence in Precision Management. Needless to say, Bolt Realty deplores any illegal activity occurring on its property and will, within reason, take whatever steps are necessary to repair the damage. Mr. Rosenkrantz has been so instructed, not only this afternoon, but on several occasions in the past.” He smiled briefly. “Are we done?”

“There’s just one more thing,” Moodrow said.

Holtz, who stood between Moodrow and Dunlap, didn’t bother to turn around. “Mr. Moodrow,” he began, “do you think you can stay out of this? If you can’t, we’ll end the conversation right here.” Again, he hesitated, waiting for Moodrow to respond, expecting and hoping the big ex-cop was infuriated and impotent.

“There
is
one more thing,” Dunlap, who’d nearly forgotten, said quietly. “The landlord. We were hoping to appeal directly to the landlord. Would you have a problem giving us the landlord’s name?”

William Holtz was genuinely amused. His salt-and-pepper crewcut seemed to leap erect as he grinned broadly. “Sergeant Dunlap, do you know anything about New York State corporate law? Or about the New York State housing code? Suffice it to say that my clients have no wish to be subject to the harassment of guerrillas like Stanley Moodrow. I have complete power of attorney with regard to the properties in question and am prepared to exercise my authority in a manner furthering the aims of my client. And that is all, gentlemen. That is the end of the interview. Please keep the following in mind: I will not receive you again unless a court compels me to do so. Have a pleasant afternoon.”

M
OODROW WAS LYING IN
bed, alone, naked, and fairly drunk, when the calls began to come in. He was alone because Betty had decided to stay overnight with her cousin in Jackson Heights; he was naked because he was drunk; he was drunk because he and Dunlap had celebrated their first useless day by hoisting six (or seven or eight) glasses of bourbon in the course of an Italian dinner.

The first caller was the paralegal, Ino Kavecchi, who launched into his own lament so quickly, he failed to pick up a hint of Moodrow’s condition. “Whatsa matter with these people?” he complained. “They don’t wanna help themselves out? I mean I went to every tenant who got a dispossess. To sign them up to a petition so we could process all of them at one time, remember? Well, I couldn’t even get all of
them
to cooperate. You believe that? Three of the families are gettin’ ready to haul ass outta there. Don’t make sense, right? I mean we’re gonna defend the
shmucks
for nothin’. It took me all goddamn morning to find someone to explain it. Not that I shouldn’t have figured it out, because it’s simple greed, like it usually is when people do shitty things. I mean the landlord ain’t been cashing their checks and they figure the judge is gonna give ’em a few months to find another place, during which they still won’t pay any rent. Since they got somewhere else to go, why not take advantage and live without rent for six months or so? I swear, if I read it in a book, I wouldn’t believe it.”

Moodrow’s head was beginning to spin with the energy of Kavecchi’s lament. “Hold it a second,” he ordered, shaking himself awake. “Did you check the empty apartments like I asked you?”

“That’s another ball-buster,” Kavecchi groaned. “Holy God, what a problem I had with
that
one. Unbelievable. I mean how am I supposed to know who’s a tenant and who’s a squatter? The place is a goddamn zoo.”

Moodrow was suddenly alert. “What are you talking about?”

“Like I admit I don’t know much about Jackson Heights, but I was under the impression this kinda shit didn’t happen out here. The place is like the Lower East Side. There’s dealers and dopers everywhere. I mean some whore propositioned me in the lobby. And this bitch was out front, man—she pulled up her skirt and flashed me. Then her boyfriend, when he saw I didn’t want the pussy, offered to sell me some crack. I mean I better get a haircut or something. People are makin’ me for a doper and I’m tryin’ to count empty apartments.”

“Innocencio…”

“Ino. Please call me Ino. Like EEEE-NO. I mean I’m third generation, already.”

Moodrow, groaning, suddenly realized that Kavecchi’s voice was the male equivalent of a Lucille Ball screech. “Ino, do me a favor and get to the point. I’m not feelin’ so hot.”

“I thought I was gonna go nuts, but then I ran into this old guy named Mike Birnbaum. What a fantastic break for me. I mean, like out of the goddamn blue, this guy walks up and asks me am I from Legal Aid and Betty said he should look out for me. He knows everything about the building. Everything.”

“Just tell me how many empty units, all right?” Moodrow’s voice began to rise. His head was throbbing in anticipation of the figure Kavecchi would give him.

“As of three o’clock this afternoon, there were thirty-two empty units in the Jackson Arms, but the most amazing part is that a bunch more people are getting ready to fly. I mean, it’s pretty amazing. I can go almost anywhere in the slums and get people organized. Not that a good tenants’ association means a sure winner, but without it you got no chance at all. Here in Jackson Heights, where the people
have
a little money, they hide in their apartments like rabbits. Go figure, right?”

“Right,” Moodrow sighed. “Go figure. Thanks for calling.”

“Whatta ya, tired?”

“Yeah, I’m tired.”

“Well, one more thing you oughta know before we hang up. I ran into this Asian named Assiz and he told me that a whole bunch of dispossess notices went out to the tenants in the other two buildings.”

Leonora Higgins’ call, which came ten minutes later, found Moodrow still naked in his bed, but far from asleep. He’d retrieved the bourbon from the kitchen cupboard right after hanging up on the paralegal and was sipping morosely when the phone rang.

“Yeah?” he said sharply.

“Stanley?”

“Leonora?” It’s me.

“How did I know?” Moodrow sat erect. In his heart of hearts, he wasn’t convinced that the owner of the Jackson Arms had anything to do with the violence, but the name or names would represent the day’s only small victory.

“I have some bad news for you, Stanley,” Leonora said calmly. She had no idea of Moodrow’s day or of his mental condition. Her own day had been long and difficult and she wanted a hot bath, a glass of white wine, and her bed. “I got into the computer this evening after court and HPD doesn’t have the name of the landlord and neither does DHCR. The property is owned by a corporation, and all the agencies have is the name of the company. Bolt Realty Corporation.”

“How could they not have it? How can you fucking regulate without knowing who you’re regulating? It could be fucking Hitler and they wouldn’t give a shit.” All of a sudden, Moodrow’s headache, temporarily driven into retreat by a renewed infusion of Oldfield’s Wild Turkey Bourbon, began to chip away at the bone above his right eye.

“You’re only partially right, Stanley. New York
would
give a shit if it knew Hitler owned property. The politicians would have to give a shit in order to protect their butts. That’s why they don’t require the information. They don’t want to know. In any event, according to the city and the state, the owner is a corporation named Bolt Realty. All other registered information concerns base rents, the size and nature of the property, and the conditions of the buildings. I can get you the date when construction was completed, the number of rooms, the median rent, the yearly rent roll, the base rent for each apartment, the last rent increase…”

“All right,” Moodrow complained. “I get the hint.” He rubbed impotently at the circle of pain spreading up into his forehead. “Wasn’t there some other place you said you were gonna try?”

“I’m trying to get into the state corporate charters. To take a look at the original application for a certificate of incorporation. But I’m having trouble, Stanley. A supervisor in Albany stumbled onto what I was doing and threw a fit.”

“Wait a minute, Leonora.” Moodrow sat bolt upright. “Don’t fuck yourself up with this. I don’t want you to take any risks when we don’t even know if the information is valuable.”

Leonora, warmed by his concern, smiled into the phone. “You know something, Stanley, you’re really sweet. You’re a very sweet man.”

“Like syrup,” Moodrow agreed, sipping at his drink. He’d made a career out of manipulating the NYPD without confronting it. “But I mean what I say: don’t put your ass on the line for this.”

“Well, not to worry, Stanley. I’m not in any danger, but I won’t be able to make another try for a week or two. If there’s anything else I can do in the meantime…”

Moodrow didn’t return the bourbon to the kitchen after Leonora Higgins hung up. Frustration is part and parcel of a detective’s working life. The rule is fifty fruitless interviews for each eyewitness, a dozen freezing mid-winter stakeouts in a battered Dodge van for each dope deal recorded on videotape. Moodrow was infuriated by a system that could regulate virtually every aspect of the real estate industry without ever recording the names of those it regulated. To an outsider, it would seem impossible, but after thirty-five years in the NYPD, Moodrow understood the cards weren’t the same for everyone. Hell, even the deck wasn’t the same. It wasn’t
designed
to be the same. Moodrow’s working career had been spent on the Lower East Side, amid the tenements and the projects, and he was accustomed to the bottom of the deck. What made him nervous (fueling his headache) was the nagging fear that he wouldn’t know what to do with the picture cards.