Forced Entry (6 page)

“A what?” Just the sound of the words “Legal Aid” made Tilley’s hackles rise. Legal Aid lawyers were the ones who pored over the police reports and the warrants, looking for an undotted “i” or an uncrossed “t.” They were the ones who worked you over on the witness stand, implying that your shield, the gold shield of the detective coveted by generations of cops, was no more than proof of your incompetence and corruption.

“I was sitting here one afternoon,” Moodrow continued, “trying to wake up (this is about a week ago) when the phone rings. A lot of the time when I’m hung over, I don’t answer the phone, but this time the fucking bell was going off between my ears. My whole brain was vibrating and I couldn’t think of any way to stop it without picking it up.

“It turns out to be this Legal Aid lawyer, Betty Haluka. She says she got my number from the mother of one of her clients, Estelle Lopez, who I happen to know. Then Haluka says she thinks her client’s innocent, but she can’t prove it by herself. She’s got an incredible caseload and there’s an attack on a cop involved, so the Assistant DA won’t help her investigate and, naturally, the cops don’t wanna hear about it, either.

“Now here’s the kicker. The client, Henry Lopez, is charged with assault, atrocious assault, drug possession, weapons possession, loitering with intent to sell narcotics and resisting arrest. He’s got a string of priors and even though his priors are all misdemeanors, if he goes to trial and he’s found guilty, he’s gonna get twenty years. On the other hand, if Lopez wants to plead guilty, they’ll drop everything but the assault and let him off with a year at Rikers Island.

“At first, I was gonna hang up the phone and forget about it. That’s how bad I was hung over, but I was curious, too. I wanted to hear about the case and why she thought the guy was innocent. And why it mattered if he was guilty or not. There were plenty of times I let a scumbag hang for a crime he didn’t commit if I thought the neighborhood was better off without him. Maybe I’m not supposed to play God, but that’s still how I did it.

“Anyway, I asked her to run it down for me and here’s what she says. The cop, Lekowski, and Lopez have completely different stories and there are no other witnesses. The cop, who was assigned to a buy-and-bust operation, says he observed Henry place several glassine envelopes, which the cop had reason to believe contained heroin, into the right-front pocket of his trousers; naturally, Lekowski, being a good cop tried to arrest Lopez, whereupon Lopez punched him in the face, forcing Lekowski to draw his gun in order to complete the arrest. A subsequent pat-down turns up four bags of dope and a used syringe. Case closed.

“Lopez says he was standing in front of a tenement in Bushwick, enjoying the heroin he injected about an hour before the incident. He admits having the dope on him, but he says when he copped there was just him and the dealer present, so there’s no way Lekowski could have seen him handle it. He also admits that he busted Lekowski’s nose, but he says he was provoked and Lekowski didn’t identify himself until after it was over which, if he’s telling the truth, would make it entrapment.

“All of a sudden I’m interested in spite of the fucking hangover. Don’t forget, this is a middle-aged woman I’m talking to. Usually they’re so goddamned stuffy, they make me feel like I got asthma. Especially civil servants, which is what Legal Aid really is. Anyway, she tells me Lopez swears that Officer Lekowski, who looked like an ordinary junkie, walked up to him and said something in English which Lopez didn’t understand. Lopez doesn’t speak English very well, especially when he’s stoned, and he responded to the cop by saying, ‘
No habla
.’

“Then Lekowski, in perfect Spanish, told Mr. Lopez that his mother (who is dead, by the way) was a whore with a cunt as big as the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. Furthermore, Henry himself was a queer, a
pato
, and his asshole had been enlarged while receiving multiple infusions of the AIDS virus from his father.

“Henry used to be a fighter before he took up heroin, so he naturally belted the cop out. In fact, Lopez knocked the cop down the stairs in front of the building, but he was too stoned to even
want
to do anything else. Lopez says he was shocked out of his underwear when Lekowski got up with a pistol in one hand and a badge in the other.

“Then Haluka stops and, me, I’m so into the story, I don’t make a sound. Imagine a middle-aged lady lawyer saying shit like ‘a cunt as big as the Holland Tunnel’? Without laughing behind her hand or something? How many women you know would say that?”

Tilley, still intensely curious, answered the question seriously. “I know some lady cops who wouldn’t blink. I think Rose could say it.”

“To a stranger?”

“She might,” Tilley insisted.

“All right, but Rose is a lot younger and she knows about the street. I can tell from Betty’s voice that I ain’t talking to a member of the younger generation. This woman comes from a time when ladies didn’t talk like that.”

“Fine,” Tilley agreed with a wave of his hand. “Go on with the story.”

“So, for a minute, neither of us speak. Then Betty says, “ ‘I think I know what’s bothering you.’ ”

“ ‘What’s that?’ ” I ask her.

“She says, ‘You’re thinking Henry Lopez is probably a scumbag and he deserves to go to jail.’

“And you’re saying that he isn’t?

“ ‘Look, Mr. Moodrow,’ she says, ‘I
know
Henry’s a junkie. He’s got six arrests for misdemeanor possession of heroin with four convictions, plus one arrest and conviction for burglary. But Henry Lopez is not a violent man and he doesn’t deserve to face twenty years in jail for the crime of pleading not guilty. Because that’s really blackmail. If he forces the State to undergo the expense of a trial and gets convicted, they’ll fry his ass for the next two decades. The man’s only twenty-five. He’s got a family and most of the time he works. I can show you letters from former employers. Who gains from putting him in jail, especially for a crime he didn’t commit?’

“Normally I wouldn’t even listen to bullshit like this, because, personally, I think most of the people who get busted are guilty. It’s very rare that someone gets popped who ain’t a criminal of some kind. But if I
gotta
work with criminals and the law, if it’s
really
in my fucking blood, then it’s better to work with people who’re at least innocent of the crime they got charged with. The difference between Betty Haluka and the other lawyers is Betty didn’t ask me to get Lopez off the hook. She just wanted me to find out if he was really innocent.

“Of course, at the time, I didn’t know exactly
what
she wanted, so I asked her what she expected me to do and I told her if I found out Lopez was a real asshole, I wouldn’t have anything to do with his defense, even if he was innocent.

“She said she didn’t have a problem with that and what she wanted was simple. At a preliminary hearing, the cop claimed that he didn’t know a single word of Spanish. If she could impeach Lekowski by proving that he could speak the language, it would blow the case wide open. Lekowski was the only witness against Lopez. Of course, I mentioned that Legal Aid has its own investigators, but she said the investigators’ unit is so small they can only work on major cases. If I don’t check out Lekowski, nobody else will.”

Moodrow, now seated on edge of the bed, stared into his former partner’s eyes just as if the story was finished. Tilley, who knew his friend too well to show his annoyance, simply asked, “What happened?”

“Shit, Jim, I wanted to ask her out right then and there, but I didn’t have the guts. I figured she’d think I was muscling her for the date…”

“I’m talking about with Lekowski and Lopez,” Tilley said mildly. In the course of their friendship, he’d grown to relish the long conversations with Moodrow. Most of the time, when they were partners, they’d begun their working day in Moodrow’s apartment. The intimacy was addicting, especially as Tilley’s most recent partner was a burnout with the unfortunate habit of withholding information in order to take sole credit for the collars they made together.

“There wasn’t that much to it once I got going,” Moodrow said. “I gave a twenty-dollar bill to the Records Clerk in Lekowski’s precinct and got a look at his package. There was a notation that he went to Queens College for three years before he came into the job, so I went out to Queens College and spent another twenty for a look at his transcript. Five semesters of conversational Spanish with nothing lower than a B+. Betty took it to the Assistant DA handling the case and they dropped all the charges. Now I’m getting calls from every Legal Aid lawyer in Manhattan. Like I was a miracle man.”

Tilley settled back in the ancient overstuffed chair Moodrow ordinarily used as a hanger, shaking his head. Moodrow never ceased to amaze him. “Now tell me about Betty Haluka,” he commanded.

“She’s about forty-five, dark-haired, pretty good-looking, but with very strong features. Full mouth and nose. She was dressed for court the times I seen her and it’s hard to tell how she’s built. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s a little chunky, but I think there’s muscle under there. She’s been twenty years with Legal Aid and she’s not burned out. She claims she’s made enough peace with herself to be satisfied that she’s doing the best she can with a fucked-up system.” Pausing, he walked to the closet and took out his other suit, a plain navy blue that Tilley knew was too small for Moodrow’s massive frame.

“What kind of name is Haluka?” Tilley asked.

“Haluka’s a Turkish name. Betty’s grandfather was a Turk, but Betty thinks of herself as a Jew. She says her family hasn’t stopped traveling since the Romans threw them out of Israel. Turkey, Armenia, Spain, England, Hungary. Wherever they went, it got bad for them sooner or later, so the family adopted the ability to make quick exits as a survival tool. They came here from Berlin in 1934, early enough to get out
with
the bankroll.”

Moodrow stopped right in the middle of his narrative, holding both suits, the blue and the brown one, at arms length. He shook his head. “So whatta ya think, Jim? Which one?”

Tilley, who, at 28, was too young to appreciate the idea of “one last chance,” nevertheless understood that Betty Haluka was very important to Stanley Moodrow. He didn’t spend any time dwelling on the reason why, though he had a flash of one of Moodrow’s most recent girlfriends, a twenty-five-year-old waitress that he, Tilley, would have dated himself, had he been single. But the waitress’s youth had, obviously, meant little to his friend, while the chunky Betty Haluka had pulled Moodrow out of a long-term drunk. “You know something, Stanley,” Tilley said. “You’d do a lot better if you shopped at one of the specialty men’s stores. You’re too big to buy clothes off the rack. Even if you know the guy who makes the suits.”

Moodrow looked at Tilley sadly. Tilley was slim and muscular, actually elegant, in the jeans, flannel shirt, and Harris Tweed jacket he was wearing at the moment. Moodrow knew that even if he, Moodrow, coughed up a grand for a custom-made suit, he’d still look like a refrigerator in drag.

“Do you know how much those specialty shops charge? Besides, I’m on a culture trip.” He held up the suits again, inspecting them carefully.

“Put on the brown one and let’s see how it fits,” Tilley advised. “I hope you got a clean white shirt. And your overcoat is pressed.”

“Shit,” Moodrow said, heading for the closet, “I forgot all about the fucking coat.” He picked a lump of wrinkled wool off the floor and shook his head. “I’ll go without a coat.”

“Gimme the goddamn coat,” Tilley responded at once. “I’ll go out to Muhammad’s on First Avenue and get it pressed. Meanwhile, take a shower and look for a tie. The woman’s a lawyer, for Christ’s sake. You look like a slob and she’s gonna dump you.”

Moodrow thought about it for a second, then relaxed. “No way,” he said. “She’s seen me. She knows what she’s getting into.”

S
YLVIA KAUFMAN, WORKING ON
a third cup of tea, looked over the beginnings of the Jackson Arms Tenants’ Association from the safety and comfort of an overstuffed chair in her living room. Not exactly the powder-puff brigade, she decided, but not Superman’s League of Justice, either. She smiled inwardly, recalling the hours sandwiched between grandson and grandaughter before the family moved out to Los Angeles. What with Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, and the blond who swam like a speedboat, Aquaman, no problem ever defied the animated efforts of the Justice League.

Her oldest friend, Annie Bonnastello, had come, of course, arriving before the others for a cold supper. Though Annie refused to let her stroke “slow me down,” she’d crossed the lobby with the aid of a walker. The nights were always hard for Annie; her joints (or her spirits) seemed to tighten with the setting sun. Sylvia couldn’t imagine her friend, a widow for more than fifteen years, riding to the rescue, even in Wonder Woman’s invisible airplane. But Annie could still vote, could still sign a petition.

Yong Park, on the other hand, short and muscular, his features composed and suitably inscrutable, looked perfectly capable of dispatching an army of evil prostitutes. But Yong Park worked a sixteen-hour day—from five in the morning, when he drove out to the Hunts Point produce market to personally choose the fruits and vegetables for his small grocery, until nine in the evening, when he, his wife and three of their four children closed shop. Park hadn’t wanted to come to the meeting; it meant leaving his business two hours early, but when Sylvia told him that Al Rosenkrantz, Precision Management’s Project Supervisor, would be on hand to hear their complaints and accept their petition, he agreed to attend.

Unfortunately, it was almost eight thirty, a half hour past the time for starting, Rosenkrantz hadn’t shown and, though Yong Park’s face was still expressionless, Pat Sheehan looked very uncomfortable. Sylvia had long ago recognized Pat’s roommate, Louis, as a gay man and she supposed that made Pat a homosexual, too, though he didn’t look particularly feminine. Sylvia’s friends in the building often made jokes about the strange couple sharing three and a half rooms on the fourth floor.