Shoot the Moon (25 page)

Michael Goodman stands in the travel section of Barnes & Noble and does his best to pretend he’s browsing. This is not easy to do, because his right hand holds a large bunch of daisies wrapped in plain white paper.

But while Goodman has pretty much followed the instructions given him over the phone yesterday by an individual known to him only as T.M., he’s also departed from those same instructions with respect to one detail. Specifically, the plastic baggie containing the white powder is not inside the paper that holds the flowers.

This departure is partly the product of Carmen’s concern and partly the product of Goodman’s willingness to listen to her suggestion, limited only by his continuing reluctance to allow her to get involved in this business of his.

After calling the Bronx Tire Exchange and asking Manny if he could come in tomorrow instead of this afternoon, Goodman and Carmen had dropped off Kelly at her grandmother’s. Then they’d made a stop at a florist.

“I want some flowers,” Goodman had told the clerk, “but I need them wrapped in white paper.”

The clerk had checked his inventory. “I got blue and I got lavender,” he’d reported. “I got a white background with a pink-and-green pattern. I got red, white, and blue stripes left over from Independence Day. I got silver and gold foil-”

“I need plain white,” Goodman had said.

“Then I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

And all had seemed lost until Carmen had come to the rescue, pointing out that all one had to do was to reverse the white background with the pink-and-green pattern, and - voilà! - one suddenly had plain white paper.

Then, on their way to Barnes & Noble, she’d spoken up again. “You’re asking to get robbed again if you put the package in there,” she’d told him. “All they have to do is see some guy standing around holding a bunch of flowers in white paper. They grab it from you and run out the door. End of scene.”

Goodman had been forced to admit that she had a point there. “So what do we do?” he’d asked her.

“We’ll both be in the store,” she’d suggested. “Only we won’t stand together. We’ll act like we don’t know each other. You’ll hold the flowers,” she’d said. “Let me hold the package. If T.M. shows up with the money, have him give it to you. Then I’ll be the one to hand him the package.”

“No good. I told you, I don’t want you messed up in this, and I mean it. There’s got to be some other way of doing it, without getting you involved.”

“All right,” she’d said then. “How about this? Once he shows you the money, you tell him to wait a minute. You come over to me, and I’ll give
you
the package. That way, you’re the one who gives it to him, and I stay out of it.”

And they’d agreed to do it that way.

Now he studies
Fodor’s Paris, London on $50 a Day, Trekking in the Himalayas,
and
Street’s Cruising Guide to the East Carribean.
He had no idea there could be so many travel books, and he’s astonished to find that they’ve all ended up in a single store. He crouches down, zeroing in on a whole shelf of books on the West Indies. He has to squint just a bit to read the titles, because he’s not wearing his glasses. Carmen’s convinced him to leave them home. Not only that - she’s actually
dressed
him. She’s made him give up his jeans for a pair of black cotton slacks. She said they looked more “hip,” whatever she meant by that. And she found in his drawer a black imitation Lacoste shirt, from which she’d painstakingly removed the alligator logo with a razor blade. An almost-black suit jacket and a pair of black shoes and socks had finished off the outfit.

“You look like Batman, Daddy” had been Kelly’s only comment.

Finally, Carmen had insisted on wetting his hair and had tried to slick it back, but she’d succeeded only in making it look something like wet Brillo.

“Pickin’ out a nice place to go to with all that money you’ll be gettin’?”

Goodman recognizes the gravelly voice before he even sees who’s addressing him. He straightens up but finds he still has to look slightly upward into a heavy-featured face dominated by bushy, dark eyebrows that barely break in the middle. Everything about the man suggests power, perhaps even violence - everything, that is, except the bunch of flowers wrapped in white paper he holds tucked under one arm like a football.

“Lookathat, we musta both bought flowers at the same place,” the man says, nodding at Goodman’s.

“I guess so,” Goodman acknowledges, realizing that the man hasn’t made a grab for Goodman’s flowers after all, though certainly Goodman would be totally powerless to stop him. He wonders for the first time if this might actually turn out to be the deal it’s supposed to be, and not another rip-off, as they’d feared.

“This one looks good,” the man says, pointing to a book on the bottom shelf. As he lowers himself to one knee, he removes his flowers from under his arm and places them on the carpeted floor.

Goodman has to squat to read the title of the book that’s drawn the man’s attention. He’s lip-reading
Pacific Northwest
when the man makes a suggestion to him: “Put your flowers down.”

And suddenly, Goodman gets it. He’s supposed to lay his flowers right next to the other bunch. Then, when it’s time to get up, they’ll do a switch - Goodman will end up with the money flowers and the man will end up with the drug flowers. Just like he’s seen it done in the movies.

Only thing is, Goodman knows the drugs aren’t
in
his flowers.

“Put your flowers down,” the man repeats. This time, it sounds more like a command than a suggestion. Goodman does as he’s told.

Sure enough, after a second or two, the man places a meaty hand on Goodman’s flowers and straightens up into a standing position. With no choice, Goodman follows his cue. He’s struck immediately by the fact that his new flowers are much heavier than his old ones.

“You got a phone where I can get back in touch with you?” the man asks, and before Goodman can think of a reason not to, he’s given him his home number.

“Listen,” he tells the man, knowing he somehow has to break the news that the drugs aren’t in with the flowers as they’re supposed to be. But before he can explain that he has to get them, Carmen is there between the two of them.

“Excuse me,” she says as she reaches with one hand for a copy of
Frommer’s New England,
her other hand finding its way into the flowers in the man’s hand. There’s nothing stealthy about the way she does it - she just
does
it, gives them each a wink, and continues down the aisle, nose in her book, boning up on Cape Cod, or maybe Martha’s Vineyard.

The startled look on the man’s face gives way to one of confusion. Goodman decides he’d better say something. “You know how it is. In this business, you can never be too careful” is what he says. Then he follows Carmen toward the front of the store and out onto Lexington Avenue.

Across the avenue, Abbruzzo and Riley huddle with Weems and Sheridan. All four detectives are there because, just before 1020 hours, Abbruzzo picked up a call from Goodman to an unidentified female that he’d be dropping his daughter off in a while so he could attend to “some business.”

“Sounds like a deal all right,” Riley had agreed.

Then, around 1100, they’d spotted the three of them headed out - the Mole, his daughter, and his “paramore.”

“They’re makin’ a move,” Abbruzzo had announced.

They’d followed them on foot, contacting Weems and Sheridan to let them know what was happening. They’d seen Goodman take his daughter into a building on Seventy-Second Street, then waited for him to emerge. Their log entries chronicle each activity that followed:

Now the four of them - Abbruzzo and Riley, who should be off duty by now, and Weems and Sheridan, who’ve just begun their tour - fall in behind the two people and resume following them. In the process, they fail to note a large man with dark eyebrows and a thick neck, who comes out of the store moments later, carrying a very similar bunch of flowers. By the time he crosses Eighty-Fifth Street and joins another man, the four detectives are heading north, trailing the first man and the woman he’s with. Riley enters one final log entry before handing the book over to Sheridan:

“I guess it was nothin’ after all,” Riley shrugs.

“Yeah,” Abbruzzo agrees. “The lovebirds must just be into flowers, is all.”

But if the lovebirds are into flowers, they show their interest in a somewhat peculiar fashion. As soon as they’re back inside the apartment, they lock the door behind them and attack their new possession. They don’t bother to notice that the paper is white on both sides; evidently, T.M.
didn’t
shop at the same florist they did. Nor do they pause to admire the flowers themselves, which are actually a tasteful mixture of red roses and white baby’s breath. Instead, they pull them apart and go directly for a white envelope that’s been wedged between the stems. Goodman retrieves it gingerly from the thorns that guard it and begins to tear it open. He’s ready for anything - play money from a Monopoly set, cut-up pieces of newspaper, even a note that when unfolded will tell them they’ve been duped.

What he finds instead are twenty-five $100 bills.

That evening, in Michael Goodman’s apartment, the two of them sit facing each other across the card table. Between them are two cups of coffee, two paper napkins, a single spoon, and a stack of $100 bills.

“I’m a drug dealer now,” is Goodman’s first spoken thought.

“Depends on how you look at it,” Carmen says.

“It’s how I look at it,” he says soberly. “Why’d you change the plan all of a sudden? You were supposed to give the package to
me,
not to T.M.”

“You looked a little lost,” she tells him, putting a hand on his forearm that tells him not to take it as a criticism. “And besides, like I said, if you’re in this, I’m in this, too. You know that old saying, When someone saves your life, you owe them forever. You have to be willing to follow them into hell.”

“I never heard that.”

“Well, it’s something like that,” she says.

He lets it go. “What do we do with the money?” he asks her, as though he’s not quite sure he’s ready to do
anything
with it.

“Well,” Carmen says, “I think the first thing you should do is take it to some bank you have nothing to do with, where nobody knows you. Have it changed into smaller bills. People tend to notice hundreds - no use arousing suspicion if you don’t have to. Then you can spend it.”

“How?”

“Money orders. You take Kelly’s most urgent medical bills, and you start there.”

Goodman tries his best to visualize doing what she suggests. As always, he reduces it to a matter of numbers. “I guess I could start by paying off the first MRI test and part of the neurologist’s bill,” he says, “and still have something left over to give them toward the new MRI.” He realizes that his getting engrossed with the numbers is his way of ducking more difficult issues, in this case, the little matter of spending money he’s earned by selling drugs. But then he pictures his daughter’s tiny pale face and imagines it contorted in pain, ravaged by a brain tumor that could have been treated, if only he’d had the money for the doctors and the tests she’d needed. And he knows without any further thought that first thing tomorrow, God help him, he’ll spend this money.

Money is on Big Red’s mind, too, as he drives his Bentley home well after midnight. He’s got over $16,000 in cash in his pocket, and - although he’s accustomed to dealing with amounts far larger than that - he doesn’t like to be driving around with it on him. Never can tell when some hotshot cop might take offense at the idea of a black man sitting behind the wheel of a fine car, decide to pull him over and go through his pockets. So, just to be on the safe side, at the next red light, he takes the money from his pocket and goes to stuff it up into the special compartment in the springs underneath the passenger seat.

Only as he does so, he feels something in his way, something flat and smooth. Then he remembers - it’s the wallet that was in the pants he and Hammer took off that Caucasian guy they relieved of the kilo. He removes it and places the money in the spot where it had been.

The light turns green. He slips the wallet into his pocket and continues on his way home.

Goodman is up early Friday morning, and by nine o’clock, he’s at the Chemical Bank on Eighty-Sixth Street. It’s a branch he hasn’t been inside for thirty years, and he figures it ought to be as safe as any.

The teller gives him a look when he says he wants to buy $2,500 worth of money orders, but he decides it’s only because it’s work for her. At one point, he thinks he sees her whispering to someone he imagines is her supervisor, but when she comes back, she has the money orders - four for $500, three for $100, and three for $50. He has to use the last $50 to cover the commission the bank charges.

He leaves the bank and heads back to his apartment, where he’ll match the various denominations with the stack of bills and envelopes he has, then begin filling in the payees’ names.

He doesn’t notice the two men who fall into step behind him as he crosses Lexington.

“He must be laundering his money,” Sheridan says to Weems. “Maybe one of us oughta go back to the bank and talk to the teller he dealt with.”

“I wouldn’t chance it,” Weems says. “From what Abbruzzo says, this guy’s a real piece of work. I guarantee you he does business at this bank all the time. That woman he dealt with inside, she’s gotta be his regular contact. He pays her off to wash his cash without making any record of it. We approach her, next thing you know, she’ll be tippin’ him off. Could blow the whole thing.”

“Good thinking, Harry,” Sheridan agrees. “When you’re right, you’re right.”

Weems smiles. “Hey, I’ve learned a thing or two after twelve years on the job.”

“So this Mole is some slick operator, huh?”

“You got
that
right.”

On his way to the subway to the Bronx, Goodman stops at a mailbox and deposits three envelopes. Each contains money orders in various denominations. He checks to make sure that the envelopes have dropped down into the box. Despite the fact that he’s been doing that for as long as he can remember, he’s yet to find one piece of mail that’s defied gravity and hung there in midair. But he continues to check anyway.

He checks coin returns after using pay phones, too, though he’s almost never found any money that way. But habits are funny things, and Michael Goodman seems to derive some sense of pleasure from the ritual itself, separate and apart from any more tangible reward that might be at stake.

At work, nothing is mentioned about Goodman’s having come in Friday rather than Thursday. Manny continues to take the position that he doesn’t much care how or when the work gets done, so long as it gets done. Goodman suspects that back when Marlene was keeping the books, Manny had to pay much more attention to details. Now he seems happy to have someone who can take over for him.

By four o’clock, he’s pretty much finished whatever work he has to do. He dials his mother-in-law’s number, hears her pick up on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Hi, it’s Michael.”

“Hello, Michael.”

“How’s everything?”

“So-so,” she tells him. “She’s still getting the headaches. But she did say the spot in her eye doesn’t bother her as much as it did before.”

“Well, I guess that’s something. Can I talk to her?”

“Sure. Hold on.”

After a moment, he hears his daughter’s voice. “Hi, Daddy.”

“Hi, angel. How you doing?”

“I’m fine. When are you coming to get me?”

“I’ll come straight from work, okay?”

“Good,” she says. “And Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“
You owe me two chapters!”

“
Two chapters?”
he laughs. “Then two chapters it’ll be! See ya later, alligator.”

“After awhile, crocodile.”

“In a shake, snake.”

“Watch out for your gizzard, lizard.”

Long after he hangs up the phone, he marvels at how she never seems to forget a single thing he teaches her.

Manny comes back into the office a little before five and peels off his customary five twenties. For some reason, it doesn’t seem like so much cash this time.

“Thanks,” Goodman says.

“My pleasure,” Manny says. “Have a good weekend.”

On his way to catch the train at 161 State Street, Goodman makes another stop at a mailbox. The envelope he drops in this one contains a Bronx Tire Exchange deposit slip and the last of the $500 money orders, covering the check Goodman had written to Mount Sinai Hospital a week ago for his daughter’s MRI.

As always, he opens the mailbox lid a second time and looks inside. Just to be sure.

“So what’s the story on Michael Goodman?”

The person asking the question is Assistant District Attorney Maggie Kennedy. She’s asking it of Detectives Ray Abbruzzo and Daniel Riley, whom she’s summoned to her office this Friday afternoon.

“He’s a slick one,” Riley tells her.

“Well, slick or not, I owe my boss an interim report on the results of the eavesdropping investigation. So you better give me something I can tell him.”

“We know he’s in action,” Abbruzzo says. “We’ve got him discussing deals, making meets, talking about moves.”

“We seen him launder his money, too,” Riley offers. “Weems and Sheridan spotted him in the bank he uses. He’s got a special teller, pays her off in cash. Won’t deal with anyone else.”

“Have you learned who his co-conspirators are?” she asks.

“To a certain extent,” Abbruzzo says. “There’s a mystery woman involved. He sometimes calls her “Grandma,” never refers to her by name. And there’s a guy up in the Bronx, looks like a muscle man, prob’ly uses him as a slugger, for protection.”

“And don’t forget his paramour,” Riley reminds him.

“Yeah,” Abbruzzo says. “He’s shackin’ up with this broad-”

“Excuse me?” Kennedy interrupts him.

“He’s cohabitizing with a female individual,” Abbruzzo says. “And we’re pretty sure she’s in on the thing, too.”

“The Molestress,” Riley explains.

“Well,” says Maggie Kennedy, “you guys better come up with something pretty soon if you want to stay in business on this one.”

“I got a feeling he’s gonna make a move this weekend,” Abbruzzo says.

“I hope so,” Kennedy tells him. “Otherwise, they’ll be pulling the plug on us the minute our thirty days are up.”

Goodman stops at his mother-in-law’s to pick up his daughter. As soon as he sees Kelly, he knows she’s having one of her headaches. She doesn’t mention it, and she’s even learned to be less obvious about shielding her eyes from the light. But he can tell anyway. Her skin looks pale and slightly translucent and feels a bit clammy to the touch. And though she smiles as soon as she sees him and laughs when he hugs her and tickles her ribs, her smiles seem somehow forced and her laughter subdued.

“I’m all packed for the weekend,” she tells him, pointing to a small red overnight bag that sits on the carpet, just inside the front door. The bag is dwarfed by Larus, who is also apparently ready to leave.

Before they go, Goodman thanks his mother-in-law for looking after Kelly. The worried look she gives him mirrors his own concerns.

They stop and buy a pizza on the way home, which means that for the last three blocks Goodman must balance the pizza, his briefcase, and Larus. Kelly carries her overnight bag. At each intersection, she dutifully takes her free hand and grasps his elbow before stepping off the curb. He knows this isn’t so much because she’s worried about crossing - at six, she’s already proclaimed she’s quite old enough to cross herself - but because she’s wise enough to know
he
worries about such moments, and therefore, she willingly defers to him.

Carmen greets them with hugs and kisses, and the thought occurs to Goodman that the three of them are settling into playing family pretty comfortably. He looks on as Kelly and Carmen reacquaint themselves, and he can’t help wondering how long it’ll be before Carmen decides to pick up and get on with her life, and what the damage will be to his daughter when she loses a mother figure all over again. From there, his thoughts move on to how Carmen’s leaving will affect
him.
He goes to the sink, washes his hands, tries to busy himself with chores that need no attending to.

Kelly shares one slice of pizza with Pop-Tart, and only picks at the salad Carmen’s put together, finally admitting that her head hurts.

“Grandma said the spot in your eye seemed to be getting a little smaller,” Goodman says.

“I think so,” Kelly agrees brightly, happy to have some good news to report. “I notice it mostly at the end of the day, or when I’m real tired.”

“Like now?” Carmen asks.

“Yeah, a little.”

“Too tired for a story?” Goodman asks her.

“No
way,
Jose.”

While Kelly gets ready for bed, and Carmen clears the table, Goodman opens the sofa bed. Again he’s struck by the family roles they’ve fallen into, and the loss he and his daughter will soon be facing. He fluffs the pillows on the bed and concentrates on the next part of the story.

The Ballerina Princess (Continued)

Now you may recall that when we last left the Ballerina Princess, she had just fallen asleep after going through the Great Unfair Test, the one that really hurt.

“It didn’t really hurt that much, Daddy,” Kelly tells him.

“You’re just trying to be brave,” he says. “It’s okay to say something hurts when it does.”

“It wasn’t that bad. Honest.”

Be that as it may, the Great Unfair Test was partially helpful to the royal doctors. And it seemed to help the Ballerina Princess a little, too. The spot she’d been seeing in one of her eyes seemed to get a little smaller afterward, and sometimes she couldn’t see it at all.

So the Ballerina Princess asked the Keeper of the Numbers a very natural question. She wanted to know if that could be the last of the tests. Which meant that the Keeper of the Numbers had to go to the Lord High Royal Doctor and ask him. And what do you think the Lord High Royal Doctor told him?

“More tests,” is Kelly’s answer.

“One more test,” proclaimed the Lord High Royal Doctor.

“What kind of a test will it be?” asked the Ballerina Princess and the Keeper of the Numbers. “A test like the one where they put you inside the big machine and scare you, or a test when they stick a needle in your back?”

“Well,” said the Lord High Royal Doctor, “since this might be the very last test, we’re going to scare
and
hurt the Ballerina Princess at the same time! First, we’re going to stick the needle in her back, and then we’re going to put her in the big machine.”

“Why in kingdom do you have to do
both
of those terrible things?” they asked.

“Because,” explained the Lord High Royal Doctor, “the combination of doing both of those things will show us exactly where these headaches are coming from. And then maybe - just maybe - we’ll be able to make them disappear for once and for all.”

“Like magic?” Kelly asks. She’s turned over onto her side, and her eyes are already closed.

“Just like magic.”

“Do you believe in magic, Daddy?”

“I very much believe in magic,” he tells her. “How else could such a funny-looking guy like me have ever have become the father of such a wonderful, beautiful, brave, smart girl like you, if not for magic?”

In place of a spoken answer, the familiar sound of his daughter’s breathing tells him she’s already asleep.

From Maggie Kennedy’s office at 80 Centre Street, Ray Abbruzzo and Daniel Riley went to Dominick’s Clam Bar in Little Italy, where Riley dutifully noted in his log that they “did have meal.” For the lowly civilian, policespeak is a wondrous thing to behold. Why, for example, should one settle for “got out of the police car” when the far more graceful “did proceed to exit the departmental vehicle” is available? Thus “gun” becomes “officially authorized weapon,” “cop” turns into “member of the force,” and - as here - “ate” gives way to “did have meal.”

“Meal” in this particular case consisted of two double orders of fried clams in Dominick’s seventh and very hottest red sauce, referred to on the wall menu as “Armageddon.” (Its six less lethal cousins begin with “Slow Death” and “Sudden Death,” warm up to “After Death” and “Way After Death,” before smoldering to “Meltdown” and “Purgatory.”)

There were huge beds of linguine to soak up the sauce, and crusty bread to wipe up that which hadn’t been soaked up. A bottle and a half of Barolo, compliments of the house, added a pleasant tingle to the experience, to say nothing of the .08 blood-alcohol percentages the two men had in common as they drove uptown to begin their evening shift at the wiretap plant. Not quite “intoxicated” under the Vehicle and Traffic Law, but legally “impaired” - nothing, of course, that a couple of experienced detectives couldn’t easily compensate for.

They’d reached the plant by eight, bullshitted with Weems and Sheridan for half an hour. The main topic of conversation had been trying to figure out which team was better off - Weems and Sheridan, who got to go home now to their wives and kids on Long Island, or Abbruzzo and Riley, who didn’t have to.

By 2200, they’ve settled in, popping Turns and chewing Rolaids in a futile attempt to quiet the belches and ease the heartburn that’s all that remains from their having “had meal” at Dominick’s.