Piece of the Action (45 page)

It was nearly ten o’clock by the time Moodrow finished his rounds. He’d spent most of the day on Henry Street and the surrounding neighborhood, the area where Jake Leibowitz had been spotted. Working the candy stores and lunch wagons, the lofts and warehouse by day; the bars and social clubs by night. The effort had proven fruitless, as such efforts usually did, and by the time Moodrow decided to head back to Kate and Greta Bloom, his feet were swollen tight against the sides of his shoes. Trudging up Avenue B, he looked down at his almost-new wing tips and silently wished for the black brogans he’d worn as a patrolman.

Well, he thought, at least Jake Leibowitz hasn’t skipped town. Moodrow had met Paul Maguire for dinner (taking the opportunity to phone Kate and make sure Greta was coming over) and heard the news about Joe Faci. While both had agreed that it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, Faci’s execution meant that two new elements would be added to the picture.

Now, Dominick Favara and his people would
have
to go after Jake Leibowitz. It was a matter of honor. The same principle, honor, apparently applied to the 6th Precinct as well. The crime had been committed on their turf. The manner in which it had been committed (in full view of witnesses; in full view of the victim’s
wife)
guaranteed a vigorous investigation.

“You know the captain over there?” Maguire had asked.

“Bettino.”

“Yeah, a hard-ass if there ever was one. He hates the word ‘Mafia,’ thinks they bring all Italians down. I went over to the Six around four o’clock and the suits wouldn’t talk to me. The word is Bettino wants the bust for himself. He’s decided that Jake Leibowitz compromised the honor of the Sixth Precinct.
His
precinct.”

“Wait a second. What makes him so sure Jake Leibowitz was the shooter?”

“He’s got witnesses, Stanley. It happened early this morning while people were going to work.”

“Jesus, this guy is crazy. It’s like he’s jumping off the roof.”

“That’s right. It’s just a matter of who’s gonna play sidewalk.”

Moodrow, within sight of home, felt his energy level rising. He was looking forward to this confrontation. Greta Bloom loved to function as Stanley Moodrow’s conscience. Now, it was his turn.

He took the first steps two at a time, then reconsidered when his feet screamed in protest. Maybe, he thought, I can’t afford to move out of the Lower East Side, but if I watch my pennies, I might be able to afford an elevator building.

The door to his apartment opened before he could turn the key in the lock. Moodrow looked down at Kate’s smiling face and broke into a huge grin. He’d been preoccupied all day, but now that they were face to face, he could scarcely believe his good fortune.

“How’d it go today?” Kate asked.

“It went and it’s gone.” Moodrow, spotting Greta perched on his living room sofa like a bird of prey, settled for a chaste kiss instead of the somewhat more lusty greeting bouncing around in his imagination.

“Are you hungry?”

“Not really. But I’d take a cup of coffee. I’m gonna be up for a while.”

“There’s coffee on the stove. I’ll warm it up.”

“Thanks, Kate. My feet are killing me. I don’t think I could make it to the kitchen.”

“Stanley,” Greta called, “for me you don’t have a ‘hello’?”

“For you I have much more than a ‘hello.’ ” Moodrow dropped into an overstuffed chair and slowly removed his shoes. “I’m not takin’ off the socks, because I don’t wanna see the blood.”

“If you take off the socks, we’ll have to evacuate the premises.” Greta, smiling, pinched her nose.

“Look at it as a genteel version of the third degree. You give me what I want, I’ll wash ’em.”

“
Nu,
so what is it you want? I don’t mean to
kvetch,
but I’m an old lady and I need my sleep. It’s ten o’clock, already.”

They were interrupted by Kate returning with a mug of coffee for Moodrow and a cup of tea for Greta. “Am I allowed to stay for this?”

“Allowed?” Moodrow snorted. “We’re not discussing the country’s nuclear secrets here.” He waited for Kate to sit down, before continuing. “Tell me something, Greta,” he said mildly. “Do you know Sarah Leibowitz?”

“
Oy
,” Greta moaned, “so
this
is what you want.” She leaned back and folded her arms across her chest. “You’re a bully is what you are. I’m glad your mother isn’t here for this.”

“Cut the crap, Greta.”

“Stanley,” Kate broke in, “is that necessary?

“As a matter of fact, it
is
necessary. I’m tired and my feet hurt. I don’t wanna be playing Ring-Around-The-Rosie until it’s time to get up tomorrow morning.”

“Stanley,” Greta said, fingering a lace doily spread over the arm of the couch, “do you know your mother made this? She was a wonderful seamstress. She could make anything.”

“Cut the crap, Greta. Do you know Sarah Leibowitz? A simple answer will do here. Yes or no?”

“I see her on the street, I recognize her. I see her in the
shul,
I nod hello. Is this
knowing?
Does this make us
landsleit
?”

“You belong to the same temple?”

“Yes.”

“And when you nod to her, she nods back?”

“I’m not saying no.”

“That’s ‘knowing,’ Greta. It’s enough for what I have in mind.” Moodrow sipped at his coffee, turning away from Greta to wink at Kate. “You having fun?” he asked.

“I think I
will
be,” Kate responded. “As soon as I figure out what’s going on.”

Moodrow turned back to Greta without commenting. “Did you know the rabbi went to see the police?” he asked.

“I heard. At the market someone mentioned this.”

“The cops were going to hold her for the gun. They were going to charge her with a violation of the Sullivan Act and hold her as a material witness. The rabbi had a talk with the captain and now she’s sitting in her own apartment. She won’t talk to anybody. Won’t even deny that she knows where her son is. As soon as a cop gets within ten feet of her, she starts screaming. Or she throws things. Or she grabs her head and moans in pain.”

“It’s not an act, Stanley. She’s a very nervous woman.”

“Greta, does she clean her house in the morning? Make her bed? Take a shower? Does she cook? Go to the market?” He paused for an answer, but Greta merely shrugged, her eyes widening. “I don’t know why, Greta, but I’m convinced that if she can do all those things, she can answer a few questions.”

Kate shifted her chair closer to Moodrow and Greta. They were staring at each other so intently, Kate felt like she was watching a movie. “I don’t see what this has to do with anything? She’s nervous. She’s not nervous. What difference does it make?”

“He wants I should be a stool pigeon is the point,” Greta huffed. “It’s against my principles.”

“What do you mean, ‘a stool pigeon’? Do you know where Jake Leibowitz is hiding?”

“He wants me to convince my friend to inform on her own son. He should bite his tongue.”

“Your
friend
?” Moodrow said. His face was blank, his small features immobile in his huge skull. “Sarah Leibowitz is your friend?”

“She’s not
a friend
friend,” Greta protested. “Stanley, please, I’m
begging
you. All my life I fought against the cops. I’m telling you we had
battles
with the police. Informing was the worst crime you could commit. It was worse than murder. I’m an old lady. I can’t change.”

Moodrow leaned back in the chair and managed a quick smile. “Greta, you run into Rosaura Pastoral lately?”

“This is not right.”

“Does she still talk about her ex-boarder? She ever mention Luis Melenguez?” He leaned forward, slapping his palms on his knees. “Maybe now that Melenguez’s widow has gone back to Puerto Rico, you don’t give a shit anymore.”

“This is not right.”

“But why
should
you care? Sarah Leibowitz is Jewish. She belongs to your
shul.
Luis Melenguez was just another Puerto Rican immigrant. You have to have loyalties, right? You have to make choices. Isn’t that what
you
told
me
when you sent me after Jake Leibowitz?”

Greta Bloom sighed. “What you are, Stanley, is a bully. A common neighborhood bully.”

“Not a bully, Greta. A cop. Did you think I was going to pull Melenguez’s killer out of a hat? If that’s what you thought, you should have thought twice, because it turns out that you’re the hat. Ain’t life grand?”

S
TANLEY MOODROW SAT AT
his kitchen table, the
Daily News
in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other, and listened to the sound of water running in the shower. He hadn’t heard that sound in a long time, not unless he was standing in the tub. He could remember a time when he and his parents had made do with a clawfoot bathtub, remember the weekend his father had decided to add a vertical pipe, a showerhead and a support for a plastic curtain. Max Moodrow had begun the job in a grouchy mood. He’d felt that, considering who actually
owned
the property, improvements were the landlord’s responsibility. Unfortunately, when he’d brought it up while paying his rent, Ed Boyer had laughed in his face.

“You would maybe like to pay more rent, Max? Perhaps you will vote for a politician to repeal rent control?”

Max Moodrow had spent the whole day (a Sunday, his one day off) assembling a Rube Goldberg contraption of his own design. At the very end, he’d turned on the water with a great flourish only to discover that the valve designed to switch the flow of water from the tub to the showerhead wasn’t working. No matter how hard he twisted the tiny lever, water continued to pour into the bathtub.

By the time he’d given up, it was after six and there was no chance of finding an open hardware store in New York City. Not even on the Lower East Side where Jewish merchants (who closed on Saturday for
Shabbes
) dared the politicians and the police to enforce the Blue Laws.

Initially, Max Moodrow’s profane howls of frustration had filled the air in their apartment. But not for long. Accompanied by his son (“Stanley, from these things you learn how to be a man, not a bum.”), he’d marched down the block to Igor Melenkov’s apartment and confronted the shopowner in his own home. Melenkov had sold him the defective valve and Melenkov had to replace it. No, he couldn’t come by the store tomorrow morning. He had to work tomorrow. And the next day and the next and the next. If he didn’t get the shower going tonight, it’d have to wait the entire week.

Melenkov had shrugged into his coat and marched back to inspect Max Moodrow’s plumbing.

“You are an idiot, Moodrow. Walve is upside-down. Please in future to stick with hammer and nails. Plumbing is for plumbers. Now, give me wrench and pour for me a wodka.”

Stanley Moodrow recalled watching Malenkov unscrew the various fittings. Malenkov had crooked a finger into the freed valve, extracted a wad of soaked paper, then re-fitted the valve with the handle reversed.

The whole process had seemed magical to five-year-old Stanley Moodrow and it was years before he figured it out. He’d watched Malenkov through childhood eyes, absorbing the information without trying to understand it. The valve must have worked either way. All reversing did was move the handle from one side to the other. Malenkov had either left something inside the valve or failed to warn Max about something left by the manufacturer. His father hadn’t done anything wrong.

Moodrow sipped at his coffee and glanced down at the day’s headline:
HUGE DOPE RAID TIES IN LUCIANO.
The Feds had conducted simultaneous raids in Philly, New York and Washington, netting twenty-one criminals, thirty-five pounds of heroin and fifty-four pounds of opium. More than the total amount seized in the entire country in 1957.

But, of course, that was the point. There were new records every year. Dope seemed to be unstoppable, like a wall of lava flowing down the side of a volcano. The papers liked to blame it on corruption, but the truth was that no one, not the most ardent cop or social reformer, had the faintest idea what to do about it.

“Morning, Stanley, anything interesting happen last night?”

Moodrow looked up to find Kate, wrapped in a large blue towel, standing in the doorway. Her hair glistened in the harsh light of an unshielded ceiling fixture. The light illuminated the spray of freckles across her cheekbones. It sparkled in her small even teeth.

In an instant, before he could take a breath, twenty-one criminals, thirty-five pounds of heroin and fifty-four pounds of opium fled up to newspaper heaven. Moodrow, his attention riveted to the corner of the towel tucked beneath Kate’s arm, lost all capacity to consider social problems.

“Damn,” he whispered.

“Damn what?” Kate was giggling.

“ ‘Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.’ ”

They made love in the living room, Kate on the couch and Moodrow kneeling in front of it. He held her by the hips as he thrust into her. As if she might fly away if he dared to let her go. He watched her closely, the twist of her mouth, the sharply indrawn breath, the tightly closed eyes. Now she was his. The thought came to him as suddenly as the opening credits in a Technicolor movie. The theatre was dark and then … magic.

Half an hour later, they were sitting across from each other at Moodrow’s kitchen table. Moodrow was buttering a piece of toast as Kate ran a brush through her hair.

“Ya know, I heard the honeymoon suite at the Waldorf was overpriced, but I never expected
this.
” He waved his toast at the four walls.

“What’d you say, Stanley?”

“I made a joke.”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening. Would it still be funny if you said it again?”

“It wasn’t funny the first time. You going to work today?”

“No, I’m not ready to go back. Maybe I’ll stick around to comfort Greta after you get through brutalizing her.”

“Don’t feel sorry for Greta. She knows what she has to do. She knew it
before
I spelled it out last night. Ask yourself this: if she had such a problem with cops, why’d she come to me in the first place? People in this neighborhood don’t go to the police. They handle their own problems whenever they can. And that includes revenge. Me, I’m a cop and I
need
cooperation. I get it by giving folks a reason to do what they already know is right.”