Shoot the Moon (20 page)

“Whiskers?” She laughs.

“Whiskers.”

“How many legs does he have?”

“Let me see,” Goodman says, pretending to search his memory. “One . . . two . . . three . . .
four!”

“Does he by any chance go ‘meow’?”

“I think he may when he’s a little older. Right now, he’s only up to ‘mew.’“

“You have a
kitten,
Daddy?”

“How come you’re so smart, angel?”

“‘Cause you gave me giant hints.”

He shifts Larus from one hand to the other.

“Who’s the other guest?” she asks excitedly. “Does he go ‘bowwow’?”

“No, and he’s a she.”

That stops her, but only for a moment. “What does
she
say?”

“Oh, she says things like ‘Hello’ and ‘How are you?’ and ‘Nice to meet you.’“

“She must be a parrot,” Kelly announces.

When they reach his building, Goodman unlocks the downstairs door and, to announce their arrival, buzzes upstairs on the intercom. By the time they make it to the fifth floor - Kelly having dismounted and leading the way, Goodman and Larus struggling to keep up - Carmen is waiting at the door.

“This is Carmen,” Goodman begins the introductions, “and this-”

“And this must be the Ballerina Princess,” beams Carmen, who’s somehow managed to lower herself to her knees and become Kelly’s height.

“And this is Larus,” Kelly announces, rescuing her mascot before her father can drop him to the floor.

“Pleased to meet you, Larus.”

A loud mewing sound, followed by the sudden appearance of black fur on the top of the sofa back, informs them that they’ve slighted someone.

“And this is Pop-Tart,” Goodman says, completing the protocol. He watches as Kelly goes immediately to the kitten, questioning his name no more than she’s questioned Carmen’s. Pop-Tart responds by allowing his head to be scratched and back to be stroked, but he keeps a wary eye on Larus, with whose species he’s apparently unfamiliar.

Goodman looks around as he catches his breath. He’s already noticed Carmen’s outfit. Tight-fitting black jeans and a matching T-shirt have replaced his own baggy loaner clothes of the morning, and she’s had her hair cut or done or something, making her look younger and even prettier than before. Now he takes in the rest of his apartment. His sofa’s been turned at a slight angle; his broken coffee table has retreated to the corner, leaving more room to get around. Last night’s empty Chianti bottle has found its way atop the radiator and sprouted a bunch of daisies, and somehow, the place looks cleaner and brighter than it did before.

Out of the corner of his eye, he notices Carmen looking at him. “Very nice,” he smiles. Her return smile suggests a touch of pride, and perhaps even a trace of relief at his approval. He catches himself wondering if her “couple of days” might not have a renewal clause buried in the fine print, and the thought fills him with an undeniable sense of excitement.

Goodman’s down to his last $20, but tomorrow’s a payday, so he splurges and orders a pizza. By adding the rest of the lettuce, Carmen manages to reproduce last evening’s salad. They gather around the card table and play family. The usually appetiteless Kelly eats two slices of pizza and shares a third with Pop-Tart, and Goodman dares to believe for a moment that being reunited with him is what she’s needed all along. His eyes suddenly fill, and he quickly brings his paper napkin to them, drying them and blowing his nose in one motion to hide his reaction. But as he lowers his napkin back to his lap, thinking he’s pulled the maneuver off quite nicely, he catches Carmen looking at him. She misses nothing, he sees.

They watch an old episode of
Taxi
on TV. When it’s bedtime, Carmen begs for a turn on the floor, but Kelly points out that there are more girls than boys, so the girls get the bed.

“Looks like you and me on the floor for sure,” Goodman tells Pop-Tart, but he’s wrong again. An hour later, he’s still trying to cushion his hipbone, while the kitten sleeps peacefully on the sofa bed with Carmen, Kelly, and Larus.

“Looks like they’re out for the count,” Daniel Riley says to Ray Abbruzzo. The two of them have been shivering in a doorway on East Ninety-Second Street, peering up at a fifth-floor window for the last two and a half hours. They had to get special authorization from a lieutenant to skip the evening’s buy-and-bust operation and do this surveillance instead, and now all they have to show for it are a lot of frozen toes and a couple of stiff necks. They step out of the doorway and begin walking east.

“I can’t figure this fucker out,” Abbruzzo says. “He’s definitely the guy that the Bradford kid met with. We know Bradford was walking around with a pocketful of pure shit. He even
told
us that the guy he was meeting was his connection. Yet the guy never looks behind him when he walks, and when we turn the place upside down, it’s clean as a whistle.”

“And now he’s playing Mr. Family Togetherness.” Riley rubs the back of his neck as he walks.

“We could stand out here playin’ with our dicks for two weeks and not see a fuckin’ thing,” Abbruzzo says. “Maybe it’s time to bring in OCCB, see if they’ll spring for a wiretap.”

Shortly after midnight, Big Red walks into the Uptown Lounge on 125th Street. He’s recognized by the regulars, with whom he exchanges greetings and high fives.

“Hey Red. Howsitgoing?”

“Whassup, man?”

“Heard you spent a night at the Centre Street Hilton.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Red smiles. “How about that?” He spots the man he’s looking for sitting at a table in the corner, and he heads that way. The man starts to stand, but Big Red motions him to stay put, lowering himself into the empty chair.

“Lookin’ good, Red. They treat you awright?”

“Red carpet for the Red Man.”

“Solid. Good to see you.”

“So,” Big Red says, leaning forward over the table, “how’d it go?”

“Like eatin’ pussy,” the other man smiles.

Big Red leans back and laughs. “You always did have a way with words, Hammer.”

“So when do you wanna whack that shit up, Red?”

“I got the girls lined up for ten o’clock tomorrow night. I think we’ll use that apartment up on Gun Hill Road.”

“That’s cool,” Hammer says. “Want me there?”

“Yeah, you be there,” Big Red says. “You an’ ol’ Buster Brown.”

Hammer smiles. “Buster Brown” is street talk for a sawed-off shotgun.

Thursday morning, Goodman explains to Kelly that he has to go to work later on, so he’ll be dropping her back at her grandmother’s.

“I want to stay with Carmen,” she says.

“No,” he tells her.

“Why not?” she pouts.

“Because I said so.” Then, remembering his promise to himself never to justify things on such an arbitrary basis, he adds, “You don’t have any other clothes here.” And throws in, “And I’m sure Grandma misses you.” What he’s not ready to tell her is that sleeping in the same bed as Carmen is one thing - after all, he was right there, only six feet away - but he’s not about to leave her in the hands of a virtual stranger for day care.

Kelly’s pout shows considerable staying power. “Can I come back tonight, to sleep?”

He softens immediately. “You bet you can.”

All smiles. Oh, to be six, Goodman thinks, when the whole world’s so very simple. And the thought reminds him of her headaches and the MRI and tomorrow’s spinal tap, and a sudden shudder runs through his body.

Shortly after eleven, Ray Abbruzzo and Daniel Riley have another meeting with Maggie Kennedy, the assistant district attorney who drew up the search-warrant papers with them.

“What can I do for you guys?” she asks.

Abbruzzo answers her question with one of his own. “Remember that guy you got us the search warrant for Saturday night?”

“The Mole? How could I forget?”

Abbruzzo nods.

“How’d it turn out?”

“Not so hot,” he admits. “But there’ve been a few significant developments since then.”

“Like what?”

“Like for one thing, the kid who gave us the information about him turned up dead. Stopped a coupla bullets with his back.”

Kennedy narrows her eyes a bit. “I thought your tip was from an anonymous caller,” she says.

“Yeah, it was,” Abbruzzo says. “But through diligent investigation, we found out who the caller was.”

“Hey, we do our homework,” Riley assures her.

“Can you connect . . . the Mole - what’s his name again?”

“Goodman.”

“Goodman,” she repeats. “Can you connect Goodman to the killing?”

“Not yet,” Abbruzzo admits, remembering he’s forgotten to call Homicide. “But the word on the street is that he right away suspected it was the kid who dropped a dime on him, and he swore he’d fix him for it.”

“Meanwhile,” she asks, “where’s Goodman’s stash, if it isn’t in his apartment?”

Abbruzzo winks and points a finger at her, as if to say she’s onto something there. “Could be anywhere,” he says.

“They don’t call this guy the Mole for nothing,” Riley reminds her. “He could have this stuff underground, for all we know.”

“Seems we’re at a dead end,” Abbruzzo says sadly. “Unless-”

“Unless I can get you a wiretap order,” Kennedy says.

Abbruzzo smiles broadly. “Now
there’s
an idea,” he says, as though the thought had never occurred to him.

At work, Goodman finds the new bookkeeping systems he’s installed greatly simplify things. Manny’s back from whatever kept him away on Monday, and Goodman makes the suggestion that they open a second bank account in order to facilitate segregating deductible expenses from nondeductible ones.

“You think it’s a good idea?” Manny asks him.

“Yes, I think so. You see-”

“Then do it,” Manny says. “Don’t tell me about it; don’t explain it to me. Just
do
it.
You
think it’s a good idea, then
I
think it’s a good idea.”

Goodman takes it as a vote of confidence and goes back to the books. He’ll continue to work until quarter of five, when Manny will pop in, peel off five twenties from his roll, and tell him to have a good weekend.

Obtaining a wiretap order - officially designated “an electronic eaves-dropping warrant, pursuant to Article 700 of the Criminal Procedure Law” - is somewhat more difficult than getting a search warrant. Maggie Kennedy works through her lunch hour with Detectives Abbruzzo and Riley, gathering the necessary information she’ll need to prepare three affidavits: one for Abbruzzo, one for herself, and one for her boss, Robert Silbering, the citywide Special Narcotics Prosecutor. The affidavits must contain facts sufficient to establish probable cause that Michael Goodman is the subscriber of a particular telephone number at his residence; that he is engaged in illegal narcotics trafficking; that he uses his phone to call and receive calls from his suppliers, customers, and confederates; and that conventional means of investigation have been tried and proved unlikely to be successful in identifying those suppliers, customers, and confederates, or in learning the whereabouts of Michael Goodman’s narcotics.

It is this last requirement - sometimes termed the
exhaustion requirement
- that the legislature has inserted into the law in an attempt to safeguard citizens from the unique intrusiveness of a wiretap, when less invasive law enforcement techniques (such as undercover buys or good, old-fashioned surveillance) might succeed in obtaining the objectives sought. But while the legislature may have acted in good faith in placing what would seem on its face to be a formidable hurdle in the path of overzealous law enforcement personnel, it turns out that police and prosecutors have been quick to learn just what magic words are sufficient to satisfy the requirement, and judges - seeing those magic words in place - are equally quick to rubber-stamp their assertions.

So, once she’s accepted the assurances of Detectives Abbruzzo and Riley that Michael Goodman, aka the Mole, is indeed using his East Ninety-second Street apartment in furtherance of his heroin trafficking (in spite of the fact that an earlier search of the premises proved negative), and that he’s using his telephone to converse with suppliers, customers, and confederates, Maggie Kennedy turns to the exhaustion requirement.

“How do we show that conventional investigative techniques are unlikely to succeed?” she asks them, pen in hand.

“Well,” Abbruzzo sighs, “we’ve tried just about everything. Surveillance is virtually impossible because so many people go in and out of the building, it’s impossible to tell which apartment they’re going to.” This one’s a win-win category: If the suspect happened to live in a single-family dwelling, then surveillance would be virtually impossible because the officers’ presence would be too obvious.

“What else?”

“The guy’s just too suspicious,” Abbruzzo confesses. “Whenever we put a tail on him, he’s all the time looking around for it. You know - doubling back, circling the block, ducking into buildings. He’s good.”

“He’s good all right,” Riley chimes in.

“And the search warrant thing,” Abbruzzo says. “We hear he got tipped off about that, moved his stash just before we hit the place.”

“How about a buy?” Kennedy suggests.

“Too dangerous,” says Abbruzzo, lifting the phrase verbatim from the statute. “He’s already killed - or had killed - the person he thinks informed on him. We can’t risk the life of a police officer.”

“This is one dangerous guy,” Riley agrees.

“I wish there was some other way,” Abbruzzo says, turning his empty palms upward. “I really do.”

Kennedy looks over her notes. “Well,” she says after a moment, “I think we’ve got enough here. We can use the dangerousness thing in here, too. Let me get started with the paperwork. Want to come back tomorrow morning, say nine o’clock?”

“Sure thing.”

“And fellas,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“Give surveillance one more try tonight.”

They’re out of her office and alone in the elevator before Abbruzzo grabs his crotch and says, “Surveillance
this!”
They both burst out laughing in one of those rare moments of camaraderie that makes them feel good to be cops.

Before leaving work, Goodman calls his mother-in-law to tell her he’ll be stopping by to pick up Kelly.

“I’m not sure she’s up to it,” she tells him. “It’s all she’s talked about all afternoon - the kitten and this new friend of yours, Carmine.”

“Carmen.”

“Carmen. Don’t you think it’s a little soon for that? What with Shirley dead only three months?”

“It’s not like
that,”
he assures her.

“I’m not telling you how to run your life, Michael. But it’s all very confusing for Kelly. What kind of a name is Carmine, anyway? Not Jewish, certainly.”

“Tell me about Kelly,” he says.

“She tries so hard to be brave, but I can see she’s in pain again. And her eyes - she keeps squinting, like the lights are too bright. I’ve got it so dark in here, I can barely see. You want to talk to her?”

“Yes.”

“Hold on.”

He does, and in a minute he hears his daughter’s “Hi, Daddy.” She sounds weak and far away.

“Hi, angel. How are you doing?”

“Okay,” she says, but he has to press the phone hard against his ear to hear her.

“Do you want me to come over and get you, or would you rather wait till tomorrow, when you’re feeling better?”

There’s a short silence, then her voice again. “Would it be okay to wait until tomorrow?”

“Of course it is.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

His nose suddenly feels as it’s been punched, and he’s glad she’s not there to see his eyes fill up. “Angel,” he says, “I am never, never, never,
never
mad at you. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too, Daddy.”

Even before he reaches the door of his apartment, Goodman detects the aroma of home cooking. He can’t quite identify the dish - it seems to be somewhere between brisket and vegetable soup - but its effect on him is nothing short of invigorating.

He lets himself in, and the aroma hits him full blast. He is all but drawn to the kitchen end of the room, where Carmen turns her head to smile at him over her shoulder. She’s wearing a tiny pair of shorts, the kind that kids make by cutting off the legs from faded jeans - he can’t remember what they’re called - and a white T-shirt, and she’s barefoot. He wants to say something about how terrific she looks, but he doesn’t trust himself to make it come out sounding right.

“Something sure smells good,” he says instead.

She lifts the lid off a pot and shows him a bubbly brown creation. “I hope you like veal stew,” she says.

The truth is, he’s stayed away from veal, not only because it’s terribly expensive, but because once, driving south through Connecticut, he saw calves chained to what looked like doghouses, and he learned later that they do that so the animals don’t get a chance to develop their muscles before they’re taken to be slaughtered. The thought of a creature living its entire short life like that was too much for him to bear. But now, since Carmen’s gone to all this expense and trouble, he knows he can’t bring that up.

He settles on “It smells absolutely delicious.”

He goes into the bathroom to wash his hands and face. He looks in the mirror, sees the same face he’s been looking at for all of his adult life. A little more drawn now perhaps, a bit thinner in the hair department, where the first hints of gray are beginning to show at the sideburns.

He takes off his glasses and places them on the edge of the sink. He lowers his face, splashes water onto it, rubs it, and reaches behind him for a towel. He pats his skin dry and lowers the towel to dry his hands. The face in the mirror looks a bit younger suddenly, not so bookish - less the stereotypical accountant, perhaps. He leaves his glasses resting on the sink and turns off the light.

“You look better without your glasses,” she smiles as soon as he rejoins her at the stove, where he notices a bottle of red wine. “Can you see without them?”

“Almost as well,” he says. “I started wearing them years ago because I thought they made me look older, more serious.”

“And why on earth would you want to look old and serious?”

“Job interviews,” he explains, breaking off the end of a loaf of sourdough bread she’s bought. “People expect accountants to look like accountants.” The bread is soft and chewy.

“Do you want rice or noodles?” she asks him.

“Whatever,” he says. “Rice, noodles. You decide.”

He walks to the sofa, extracts his copy of the
Times
from his briefcase, and sits, happy to leave her in charge. But there’s one thing that bothers him.

“Carmen?”

“Yes?”

“Where did all this food come from? I mean, two days ago, you told me you had no money. All of a sudden, you’re showing up with veal.”

She leaves the stove and comes over to the sofa, where she stands directly in front of him. “What did you do this afternoon, Michael?”

He shrugs before answering, “I went to work.”

“Me, too,” she smiles.

“What kind of work?”

“Work,” she says. “And if that calls for a cross-examination, can it at least wait until after dinner?”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m glad you’ve got a job. I was just curious, that’s all.”

“I know,” she smiles. “I didn’t mean to jump.” And she leans forward and kisses his forehead lightly before returning to her cooking.

He tries to immerse himself in the sports section, but can think only of her lips touching his forehead. He vows not to be the one to bring up her job.