Forced Entry (44 page)

“You don’t know where Najowski lives?”

“I
never
been there. That’s what I’m sayin’, man. But there can’t be no more than one Marek Najowski livin’ in Brooklyn Heights. Like the
operator
could give you the address.”

Moodrow reached inside the car and jerked the gearshift into park. “How much time you done, Muhammad?”

“Say what?”

“I asked you how much time you’ve done. I know you were upstate with Marty Blanks.”

“I did six years in Clinton.”

“And before that?”

“Small bits on Rikers. What you wanna know this shit for?” If Muhammad’s spirits had begun to rise when Moodrow first stopped pushing the car toward the river, his very essence was flooded with relief when Moodrow locked the transmission. Now, in the face of Moodrow’s new line of questioning, he was uneasy, sensing bad news coming on like the rush of cocaine in reverse.

“You got coke in this car, Muhammad?”

“Yeah. I got an ounce in the glove compartment. Take it, man. Take it and let me go.”

Moodrow patiently walked around the car. Covering his hand with a white handkerchief, he opened the small door, took out the coke in its Ziploc bag and laid it on the seat next to Latif.

“What you doin’, Moodrow? What the
fuck
you doin’?”

“ ‘In plain view’ is what the lawyers call it.” Moodrow walked back to the driver’s side of the car. He reached inside, flicked the light switch, and an old Buick with a badly dented fender pulled slowly onto the pier. “It don’t matter that Blanks had another partner. You knew what they were doing and you didn’t warn me. You knew it and you were perfectly willing to let me die. In fact, I’d go so far as to say you didn’t consider my safety or the safety of any of the poor bastards your partner killed even one little time. You think I’m such an asshole, I’m gonna let you get by with that, just because you told me a name? A coke-dealing, murdering fuck like you? You done a lot of time, Latif. What with the dope laws bein’ as tight as they are and the judges handin’ out years like fuckin’ Christmas candy, you’ll do fifteen if the cops find you first. See, what I’m gonna do is turn on the headlights before I go. That’s bound to attract some attention, because people around here get nosy about fifty-thousand-dollar cars parked on deserted piers. Now, if I was you, I’d start prayin’ real hard. I’d pray, Dear God, please let the pigs find me
before
the wolves.”

M
OODROW WAS UP AND
waiting for Jim Tilley before dawn, though Tilley wasn’t due to arrive until nine o’clock. He wanted a chance to think about the last stages of the chase, to savor his victory. He’d been called an old man, an ancient, a dozen times in the last few weeks.
“If you were still a cop…”
He’d even said it to himself, blaming his failure to foresee the events in Queens on some incipient senility. Now he knew that his inept analysis was part of the process of learning his new job. As a cop, he’d worked with strangers; here the strangers became his friends. He’d liked Sylvia Kaufman from the beginning and her death had flooded him with self-reproach, opening old, supposedly healed wounds. Sitting at his own kitchen table with the inevitable cup of coffee, he accepted his mistake for what it was: an error in judgment based on limited information. Blaming himself would do nobody, especially him, any good. It might, on the other hand, sweeten the endgame.

Clients were not the same as complainants: if he was going to function in retirement, he would have to get used to it. Cops were like doctors, carefully maintaining enough distance to ensure proper perspective. That wasn’t possible here; he was going to have to serve individuals and not the state. He allowed his mind to re-create the shooting in front of the Jackson Arms. While it no longer frightened him, Inez Almeyda, blood pouring from her eyes and ears, still cried out for revenge. As did Sylvia Kaufman, Mike Birnbaum, Yong Park’s mother, Katerina Nikolis…

Stubbornly, he pushed the victims away. There was no profit in anger. Maybe he
did
have the last conspirator in his sights, but he didn’t have a shred of evidence to connect him with either Marty Blanks or the Jackson Arms. A single fingerprint had led to Maurice Babbit, who had led to Marty Blanks, who
should have
led to Marek Najowski. Now the chain of evidence was irrevocably severed. Perhaps the lawyer, William Holtz, could be persuaded to turn on his master, but the lawyer wasn’t his problem: pressure on the lawyer would have to come from Leonora Higgins. His own options were far more limited. He would confront Najowski; let him know that he’d been identified, that he couldn’t hide behind his partner’s death. Perhaps Najowski would panic. If not…

Moodrow glanced at the clock over the sink: five thirty. He rose and drifted across the room to the stove, pouring out a second cup of coffee. At this rate, he’d be floating in caffeine before the day was over. There was a time when he…

It was nearly six o’clock before he finally acknowledged the only important question left to consider. What would he do if there was no legal way to reach Najowski? What if Najowski was safe? What if he was safe and he
knew
it? Once again the faces rose up; he could see Sylvia Kaufman clearly, serving tea and cake while organizing her rebellion. The acrid smell of the blackened basement assaulted his nostrils. Sylvia’s body had been found halfway between the bed and the door. She had tried to get out, had known what was coming.

Suddenly, he had a vision of Yong Parks’ daughter, the little girl with the red ribbon in her jet-black hair. She’d witnessed the brutal attack on her grandmother, seen the rape. In spite of himself, Moodrow began to re-create the actual scene: the helpless woman, the attacker lowering his trousers, ripping at the woman’s clothing, penetrating.

“The mother-fucker pays,” he said aloud. “One way or another.”

“Who pays, Stanley?” Betty Haluka wandered, half-asleep, into the kitchen.

Moodrow ignored the question. “I got something I wanna ask you, Betty. About confessions. See, I can’t think of any way to pin Najowski for what he did.”

“That’s what you said last night.”

“Well, the situation hasn’t changed.”

“Maybe the lawyer will turn on his client,” Betty suggested hopefully.

“Maybe he will,” Moodrow admitted, “but I can’t sit and wait for that to happen. For all we know, the lawyer’s just accepting rent money and paying the mortgage.”

Setting down her coffee, Betty came up behind Moodrow and began to massage his neck and shoulders. As always, she was impressed with his bulk. He seemed to be made of hard rubber, to be without bones, even at the point of his shoulder or the back of his neck.

“I feel much better today, Stanley,” she said finally. “I didn’t dream about it last night. For the first time. I didn’t see it again.”

“I knew that would happen,” Moodrow said, covering one of her hands with his own.

“But that doesn’t mean I want to see anyone get off. It doesn’t mean that at all.”

Moodrow smiled, then changed the subject abruptly. “What interests me this minute is confessions. Now that I’m not a cop anymore, do I still have to give the same warnings? What if I grab Najowski and shake him until he opens up? Put it all on videotape. Would it be admissible?”

“What makes you think you wouldn’t be arrested for assault? If there was any sign of duress on the tape, you could be the one making the confession. But don’t worry, Stanley, I’ll defend you for…let’s say half your pension.”

“What if I took a confession without appearing on the tape?” Moodrow ignored the humor. “What if I passed the tape, along with any documents connecting Najowski with Blanks or the Jackson Arms, to Leonora Higgins? Suppose
she
got the lawyer, Holtz, to turn on Najowski. What would happen if you put it all together?”

“No judge will admit a confession that was obtained under duress. Even suspected duress. Judges think the state should be able to build a case without confessions. Also, how will a judge know that evidence you seize illegally really came from Najowski’s home? A document with Najowski’s name on it is evidence, but a pound of cocaine might have come from anywhere. A private citizen doesn’t have the same kind of believability as a cop.”

“Suppose,” Moodrow said, “I find a way to trick Najowski into confessing? Suppose I do it in a way that he can’t claim he was forced?”

“Stanley, criminals testify against each other all the time. A man goes into jail, talks too much to his cellmate and the next thing he knows, the cellmate is testifying against him in court. There was no
Miranda
warning given, because the cellmate wasn’t an agent of law enforcement. But if the police put an undercover cop in the cell and the accused made the same confession, it would be completely inadmissible.”

Moodrow seemed to relax for the first time. “With that much room,” he announced, “I don’t think it’s gonna be a problem. I’m bound to figure something out.”

When Leonora Higgins called from her office, Moodrow and Betty were in the shower, disproving the cliché that equates a clean mind with a clean body. Moodrow, who was waiting to hear from Jim Tilley, stumbled out of the steamy bathroom, grabbed the phone and muttered something like, “I’ll call ya back in a fuckin’ minute, all right?” Then hung up.

The phone rang again before he closed the bathroom door, and this time Leonora began speaking before he could say a word.

“Don’t you dare hang up the phone, old man,” she said. “
I’m
the one who only has a ‘fuckin’ minute.’
You’re
the one who’s unemployed, remember?”

“Leonora,” Moodrow groaned, reorienting himself as he went along. “I thought it was Tilley. What’s up?”

“Good news, Stanley. Holtz is going down. We’re arresting him this afternoon.”

Moodrow felt his spirits rising—in direct contrast to his penis—as she spoke the word “arresting.” “What have you got him for?”

“Forgery in the first degree. Falsifying business records. Offering a false instrument for filing. Tampering with public records. Insurance fraud. Conspiracy in the second degree. Two E felonies. One D felony. Two C felonies. One B felony.”

“If you run that consecutively, he’ll come out of jail on a respirator,” Moodrow observed happily. “What’s the conspiracy?”

Leonora laughed. “Rosenkrantz fell apart. Cried like a big, fat baby. He says Holtz ordered him to cut off services to the building, to violate leases, to hire thugs to break the locks and mailboxes. He says Holtz supplied him with a list of criminals to fill the vacant apartments. Stanley, the head of the securities division says we can use Holtz to get to the owner of the Jackson Arms. Trade some years for some names.”

“I already have the names, Leonora. I’m not as retired as everybody wants to believe.” Quickly, he ran down the last few days’ events, including Babbit (who was already in police custody), Babbit’s connection with Blanks and the legally useless means by which he’d gotten the name of Marek Najowski. “I guarantee,” he finished, “that Blanks hired the Cohan brothers and Maurice Babbit. That lets Najowski off the hook for any of the big stuff.”

Leonora’s voice was resigned, the voice of someone accustomed to the vagaries of justice. “We can still get him for conspiracy. That’s a B felony and it calls for a minimum six years. Six to twenty-five. That’s not chopped liver, Stanley.”

“It ain’t justice, either. I’ll see ya later.”

Jim Tilley began to bang on the front door before the phone was back on the hook. Like a silent movie comedian, Moodrow gazed wistfully at Betty, who peered around the shower curtain, her naked body a shadow against the running water. Accepting the inevitable, she plucked a towel from the rack and threw it out to Moodrow, then climbed into her bathrobe and headed for the bedroom. Moodrow stopped her briefly as she went past him.

“See how it is?” he asked. “You flop around like a walrus out of water, working your ass off and getting nowhere. Then you hit the right track and you get pushed along with no effort at all. Ever watch the sea gulls over by the Jersey palisades? They come off the river struggling so hard you think they’re gonna sink back into the water, then they catch a rising air current and jump a hundred feet in a few seconds.”

An hour later, Jim Tilley and Stanley Moodrow were sitting outside a five-story brownstone at 1010 Grace Court, in Brooklyn Heights. Tilley had gotten Najowski’s unlisted phone number and address by giving a shield number (not his own) to a NYNEX supervisor. A test call had been rewarded with Najowski proclaiming that he was on vacation, that his machine was doing announcements only, that no messages would be recorded.

“I think we’ve gotta stake the place out,” Tilley contended. “The message says he’ll be gone for a few days. He’ll turn up if we wait.”

“By then, half the NYPD is gonna be waiting with us. I don’t give the lawyer’s honor twenty-four hours. Guys like Holtz crap out before they get into a cell. Jail’s what they’re really scared of, anyway. They can do the time, but they don’t care for the company. Holtz’ll give up Najowski and the detectives will show up to make an arrest. I was kinda hoping we could get to Najowski first.”

“I can’t say as I blame you,” Tilley responded, “but I still don’t see how we’re gonna find your boy in twenty-four hours.”

“You’re right. That’s impossible. The fucking guy could be anywhere and if we start questioning his neighbors, it’ll get back to him. What I was thinking is that I got this ex-con who works with me a little. Name’s Pat Sheehan. Specializes in locks and safes. Claims he can use picks, drills, explosives. What about if we send him inside? There might be documents in the apartment. Some link with Blanks.”

“A fuckin’ convict? Why would you wanna work with an asshole like that? You could never count on a criminal. He’d sell you out in a second.”

Moodrow pushed back against the seat, reveling in the comfort of Tilley’s Buick. “I’m not asking the guy to fucking marry me. He wants to work and I got work for him. Besides, I think he’s all right.”

Tilley stared at Najowski’s building for a moment, before changing the subject. “Did I tell you what my partner did to me last week?” he asked.