Piece of the Action (35 page)

Still, he found himself looking in both directions as he stepped onto the sidewalk. He didn’t see any cops, but a brand-new Cadillac parked across the street caught his attention. The man sitting behind the wheel certainly appeared to be on a stakeout, even if the Cadillac was a bit conspicuous.

Moodrow’s first impulse was to cross the street and confront whoever it was, but before he could move, the man rolled down the window and waved to him.

“Hey, Stanley,” he yelled. “C’mere.”

C’mere? Moodrow stood on the sidewalk and stared across at the Cadillac. The car was parked in shadow and he couldn’t make out the features of the man sitting behind the wheel. As he watched, the Cadillac pulled out into the center of the one-way street, then backed up until it was right in front of him.

“Don’t be a hard-head, Stanley. I just wanna talk to ya.”

“Carmine?”

“Ya remember me. I’m flattered.”

Carmine Stettecase was a notorious bully who’d gone through St. Stephen’s two years ahead of Stanley Moodrow. They’d had any number of battles until, somewhere toward the end of grammar school, Carmine had decided to leave his younger schoolmate alone. Predictably, Carmine had left school in ninth grade to go into business with his Uncle Stefano, a small-time bookie. Five years later, when Uncle Stefano dropped dead in a bar on Grand Street, Carmine had recruited his old buddy, Dominick Favara, another of Moodrow’s contemporaries, to help him out with the business. Over time, as they’d moved into prostitution, loan-sharking and heroin, Favara had become the boss and Carmine the worker.

Moodrow knew all about Stettecase and Favara. Their progress had been a common topic of conversation among St. Stephen’s alumni. He recalled standing in the rain one day, in his uniform, when Dominick had come sailing down the street in a new Chevy. Favara had gone out of his way to run through a puddle, sending a wave of muddy water splattering against Moodrow’s black rubber raincoat.

“What’s up, Carmine,” Moodrow said casually. “You decided to confess to your crimes?”

“Yeah, ha-ha, that’s a good one. Hop in, Dominick wants to talk to ya.”

Moodrow felt his heart begin to pound in his chest. For a moment, he was too excited to answer. This was the way it had to be. You pounded the streets, screamed in people’s faces, ate slammed doors, walked until your feet fell off. You kept doing it until something gave. It wasn’t about clues and brain power. It was about persistence. Persistence and, as Sam Berrigan had insisted, desire.

“What’s he want?” Moodrow asked. There was nothing to be gained by showing his excitement to Carmine Stettecase. “And why doesn’t he come to
me
? I’m not too crazy about taking orders from punks like Dominick Favara.”

“He
can’t
come to you. Whatta ya, crazy? I’m takin’ a big chance myself, so if ya don’t mind, let’s get outta here before someone sees me talkin’ to a cop.”

Moodrow strolled around to the passenger’s side and got in alongside Stettecase. “This better be good, Carmine. If it isn’t, I’m gonna haunt your ass for the next twenty years.”

“Jeez, Stanley, you ain’t changed at all. I mean I woulda hoped ya matured a little, but ya still a hard-head. Only
you
could think I’d do this and not be playin’ square.”

Moodrow expected a quick ride over to Little Italy, but Stettecase steered the car onto the East River Drive and headed downtown.

“Where we heading?” Moodrow asked, as they entered the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. “I oughta warn you, if you’re kidnapping me, I’m not worth shit.”

“That’s good, Stanley.” Carmine turned his moon face away from the line of traffic. “It’s good to see you’re loosenin’ up, because this here is your lucky day. I wish I could tell ya the thing Dominick’s gonna tell ya, but, hey, loose lips sink ships, right?”

“How about telling me the price I have to pay. Or are you and Dominick giving out charity in your old age?”

That was the whole thing, of course—the price. Moodrow had no doubt that Dominick Favara knew the identity of Melenguez’s killer. Or that Favara would use that information to bury Accacio. It made perfect sense. They were both from the neighborhood, both young and ambitious, both trying to find a niche in the ever-expanding heroin trade. Moodrow wondered, for a moment, if Accacio was from the neighborhood. He hadn’t gone to school at St. Stephen’s, but that meant less than nothing. There were a dozen Catholic schools in lower Manhattan.

“You didn’t answer my question, Carmine. Where we going?”

“There’s a lunchwagon on Bond and President Streets. Dominick’s waitin’ for us there.”

The hand-painted sign read
Louie’s Luncheonette.
Stuck between two small warehouses, it was little more than a shack with a kitchen, the kind of a place that opened at four in the morning and closed as soon as the local workers went home in the afternoon. It sold soup and sandwiches, coffee and soda, cigars and cigarettes. The french fries would be so greasy you could wring them out like wet laundry.

“Hey, Stanley,” a voice called from the back, “over here.”

“He’s in the booth,” Carmine said, as if Moodrow had suddenly gone blind.

“I could figure that out,” Moodrow said. He strode to the back of the lunchwagon, ignored Favara’s outstretched hand and sat down hard on the bench. “What’s up, Dominick?”

Favara frowned, letting his hand drop into his lap. “I don’t see why ya takin’ that attitude,” he said. “Bein’ as we was always friends at St. Stephen’s.”

“We were never friends,” Moodrow said quietly. “You were the class bully. You bullied anybody weaker than yourself. Correction, anybody you
thought
was weaker. I was the kid who kicked your ass.”

“He ain’t bullshittin’,” Carmine said. “Ya remember in seventh grade, Dominick? What we decided after gettin’ into about ten fights with this kid?”

“
Leave Stanley alone
,” the two men said in unison, then broke out laughing.

Moodrow felt his face redden. He wanted to reach across the table and smack Favara’s face, but he held himself in check. “Enjoy your joke, Dominick,” he said, “but not for too long. You got five minutes to get this over with.”

“Whatta ya gonna do?” Carmine asked. “Walk home?”

“What I’m gonna do is take the keys out of your pocket, Carmine, and drive back to the Lower East Side. That’s after I smack the shit out of you.”

“Listen, you prick …”

Dominick Favara put a restraining hand on Carmine’s shoulder. “Ya gotta forgive Carmine,” Favara said. “He ain’t used to havin’ people call his bluff.”

Moodrow grinned. “I forgive you, Carmine. But you’ll still have to stay after school and wash the blackboards. Now, what’s the story, Dominick? You gonna tell me who killed Judge Crater?”

“Would ya believe Harry Truman?”

“I’ll arrange a press conference for high noon.”

“See, Carmine?” Favara slapped his partner’s back. “I told ya he’d loosen up.”

Moodrow leaned his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his closed fists. The truth was that Dominick Favara and Carmine Stettecase could have busted his chops for a week and he still wouldn’t walk away. He felt almost feverish, the flush of excitement something like the few seconds between knowing your opponent’s helplessness and finishing him off. Now the tension would go on for days while he gathered enough evidence to make an arrest. Until he slapped the cuffs on a killer for the first time. What Moodrow suddenly realized, his eyes boring into Dominick Favara’s as if they could push their way into Favara’s brain and pluck out the information, was that he loved his job. And that he wanted to continue doing it until he was too old to tie his shoes.

“Jeez, I hate fighters,” Favara said. “They don’t blink. You can never beat ’em when it comes to hard looks.”

“C’mon, Dominick,” Moodrow whispered. “Let’s do business.”

Favara leaned over the table, putting his face within inches of Moodrow’s. “Here’s what I heard, Stanley. I heard you’re lookin’ for the people who blasted that spic on Pitt Street. I can tell ya who was there and why they were there. I can tell ya, for instance, that the whole thing happened because some asshole panicked. I can tell ya that same asshole is now dead. Also one of his partners. I can tell ya …”

“Get to the point,” Moodrow said. “What do you want from me?”

“Nothing. Right
now.
But maybe, somewhere in the future, I’ll ask for a favor. Nothing big, Stanley. I ain’t gonna ask ya to fix the grand jury. Sometimes I get a phone number and I need an address. For you, it’s nothin’. For me, it’s a royal pain in the ass. Plus …”

“So you can find the deadbeats, right?” Moodrow interrupted. “That’s why you’d want an address.”

“Yeah. Like that.”

“And then you can send Carmine with a baseball bat to make the collections.”

“Hey, Stanley …”

“Forget it, Dominick. Wipe that crap out of your mind. It ain’t gonna happen.” Moodrow pulled his head back, freeing his hands. “I’m gonna tell you what I told your partner. If you brought me here to jerk my chain, I’m gonna make your life miserable for the rest of my career. You’re gonna be my personal project. Days off? Vacations? Some guys take up fishing to pass the lonely hours.
I’m
gonna take up Dominick Favara.”

“You expect me to give it up for nothin’? I tell ya, Stanley, I’m startin’ to lose my temper.”

“Go ahead, Dominick. Go ahead and lose it. See what happens.” Moodrow leaned back and smiled. “The way I see it, Dominick, is that you and Carmine are a couple of ambitious punks. You’re both trying to move up in the world and if you can do it by putting me onto Steppy Accacio, so much the better. Look at it this way, Dominick, you tell me who killed Luis Melenguez, you’re payin’ yourself.”

“If you got all the answers, whatta ya doin’ here?”

“I’m waiting for you to cut the bullshit and say what you have to say.”

Favara looked over at his partner for a moment, then turned back to Moodrow. “That part of the Lower East Side, Pitt Street and along the river, is being run by Steppy Accacio, who you already know about. Nobody operates east of Avenue B without payin’ Steppy off. The pimp got behind on his payments. He was makin’ noises like he didn’t see why he should have to pay at all. Accacio can’t ignore this. He’s
gotta
do somethin’, because if he don’t,
nobody’s
gonna pay. You gettin’ the picture?”

“Keep goin’, Dominick. And don’t forget the punch line.”

Favara grinned. “I won’t forget, Stanley, but I gotta save it for the end. Like any good comedian. Now, what Steppy does is hire three outside guys, three Jews, to break the pimp’s face. It’s supposed to be a lesson for everyone, a real simple deal. Only this little spic walks into the middle of it and one of the Jews plugs him. The shooter, by the way, ain’t been seen since right after it happened. The word on the street is that he was punished by his partners for makin’ everybody’s life miserable.

“That was
supposed
to be all she wrote. It was supposed to be the whole story. Only last night, one of the Jews comes to me and says he ain’t happy with Steppy. He’s lookin’ to be on his own. Then, today, I hear from a guy who’s very close to Steppy, a mug who
also
wants out. He tells me the Jew’s partner got into a car with the wrong people. Now he’s sleepin’ in the trunk. Steppy’s runnin’ scared, Stanley, because the cops are puttin’ the heat on him. Which is very interestin’, seein’ as it was the cops who were supposed to fix it.”

“What about O’Neill and his wife? You know about them?”

“They seen what happened, Stanley. They had to go.”

“Who killed them?”

“The Jews. The ones who killed the spic. At least, that’s what I
heard.
I don’t want ya to think I was there.”

“Anything else?”

“Just the punch line, Stanley. One little, two little, three little Jewboys, right? Number one, the shooter, was named Abe Weinberg. Number two, who’s sleepin’ in a trunk, was named Izzy Stein. Number three, who’s still walkin’ around, is named Jake Leibowitz. If ya wanna play Dick Tracy and solve this crime, ya better move fast, Stanley, ’cause Mister Leibowitz ain’t gonna be around much longer. Steppy’s cuttin’ his losses.”

I
T WAS RAINING HARD BY
the time Carmine Stettecase dropped Moodrow off by his car on the Lower East Side. The battered Ford looked like a poor relation next to Carmine’s blue Cadillac, and Carmine didn’t waste any time making the obvious comparison.

“That ya car, Stanley?” he asked. “That what ya drivin’? Christ, you’d be smarter takin’ the subway.”

Moodrow turned up the collar of his trenchcoat and tugged on the brim of his hat. “Maybe you should stick around, Carmine. In case I need a push. My Ford doesn’t like to start in the rain.”

“That’s a joke, right? Me pushin’ that piece of shit with my Fleetwood?” Carmine shut down the windshield wipers and a curtain of rain swept across the glass. “Lemme ask ya somethin’, Stanley. And don’t get all hot, ’cause I ain’t bustin’ balls. I really wanna know. I wanna know how ya could live like this when ya could do so much better? Why do ya give a shit about Jake Leibowitz? Or that spic, Melenguez? Dominick and me, we’re goin’ up in the world. We ain’t stupid, like that mountain guinea, Accacio. We ain’t gonna leave bodies on the street. You could play along with us or not play along with us. Nothin’s gonna change. No matter
what
ya do, the neighborhood’s gonna stay the same sewer it always was.”

Moodrow opened the door without replying. He stepped out into the rain, Carmine’s voice following him all the way. “Ya wanna be a hero, Stanley? That what it is? Protectin’ the weak and the poor? You’re a dope, Stanley. You was always a dope.”

But Moodrow was past replying. His mind, having already shifted gears, was busy sifting information, casting about for a course of action. Moodrow had been surprised to hear that Leibowitz was a neighborhood kid, but then Favara had filled in the details and it had all made sense. Leibowitz had spent twelve years in a federal prison. He’d left the Lower East Side just about the time Moodrow had become aware of the streets and the animals who inhabited them. Jake was back, now. And Stanley Moodrow was all grown up. Stanley Moodrow had become the cop who was going to put Jake Leibowitz in the electric chair.