Forced Entry (18 page)

“Think about what?”

“Like where this nightmare came from.” They were driving on Roosevelt Avenue, under the elevated 7 Train, a “subway” line connecting much of northern Queens to Manhattan. Both sides of the street were lined with businesses. Businesses that sported clean windows and freshly painted signs, that boasted of prosperity in their very facades. Usually, in neighborhoods that were sliding downhill, the cancer grows first in the shadows under the el. The dark spaces conceal the activities of the dealers, the whores, and the hunters. But there were no kids skulking in the alleyways. No adults, either, except for shoppers running in and out of the stores or diners patronizing the many restaurants—Chinese, Korean, Indian, South American—that dotted every block.

“I’ll tell you something,” Moodrow finally said. “The existence of all these restaurants proves the neighborhood has money. Poor people eat at home.”

“What’s the point?” Betty asked. “Jackson Heights was always middle-class.”

“Then where did they come from? The whores? The two dealers? If they didn’t come from the neighborhood, how did they find the empty apartments? Coincidence? Cops hate coincidence, Betty. The idea that it ‘just happened’ makes cops want to puke.”

They were still a half hour early when Moodrow pulled the Honda to the curb across from the Jackson Arms. Several people turned from the sidewalk to enter the building. Working people, obviously making their way home after a late day.

“Betty, you mind going in to your Aunt Sylvia’s by yourself? There’s someone I need to talk to in an upstairs apartment. I’ll probably be finished before the meeting starts.”

“I don’t mind,” Betty said. “You know I can almost
see
your mind going away from me. When you go into your cop mode, you don’t have room for anything else.”

They parted at the elevator, Moodrow waiting until she was out of sight before pressing the floor button. As the elevator slowly creaked toward the fourth floor, banging repeatedly against the side of the shaft, Moodrow, who’d been sincere when he spoke of being “on duty,” was, nevertheless, thinking about Betty Haluka. He’d dated women, unlike Betty, who were outside his caste. Above it, actually. Usually, they were condescending, but occasionally they tiptoed around his feelings like junkies trying to conceal a dime bag of dope. There was never a hint of permanence with any of them. Betty, on the other hand, spoke to him like they were colleagues. Almost like they were both cops.

The elevator door, after a hearty yank by Moodrow, slid open on the fourth floor, and Moodrow walked down the hallway to Pat Sheehan’s apartment, noting, out of pure habit, the stairwell between the elevator and the apartment door. He knocked softly on Pat Sheehan’s door and, again out of habit, held his breath as he listened for footsteps.

They came promptly—a quick march across the apartment, followed by a chorus of snapping locks. Moodrow knew it wasn’t Pat Sheehan; Pat walked much more quietly. Though not alarmed, he eased off to one side of the door, opening his coat to give his hand a path to the worn .38 hanging under his left arm.

“Yessir?” The black woman who opened the door inspected him carefully.

“I’m looking for Pat Sheehan,” Moodrow replied. He tried to bluff her with eye contact, but she didn’t seem to be impressed.

“Pat ain’t home yet,” she announced. “He’s workin’ late.”

“What time is he expected?”

“Soon, I hope.”

“You’re the health aide taking care of Persio, right?”

“That’s right.” She stood in the doorway, her thick torso firmly planted between him and the interior of the apartment.

“Ask Persio if he’d mind talking to Sergeant Moodrow.” He used his former rank deliberately, expecting her, as she did, to step back and make eye contact with Louis Persio. As soon as the door opened far enough to allow him to pass through without pushing against it, Moodrow stepped into the apartment. “How ya feeling, Persio? You look a lot better tonight.”

Louis Persio was sitting in an armchair watching the nightly news on a battered Sony. He was, in fact, feeling much better than he had on Moodrow’s first visit. Massive doses of antibiotics had broken his fever, destroying the microbes in his throat and lungs. He felt in control of his thoughts for the first time in months.

“It’s a temporary condition,” he responded, smiling broadly. “This is Maria Parker, angel of mercy. Maria, this is Moodrow. He’s not a sergeant anymore. He retired from the police. Now he just pretends, like the rest of us.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Moodrow said immediately, extending his hand.

Maria Parker, furious over being fooled, kept her own hand by her side. “I’ll be in the bedroom,” she said to Persio. “If you need me.”

“I have a big problem,” Persio announced as soon as the bedroom door closed behind the aide. “For some reason I can’t possibly imagine, the landlord, whoever he is, feels that I’m less than a desirable tenant. The bitch sent me a dispossess notice. Can you imagine me appearing in a courtroom? I’d need a makeup man.”

“They gotta put down a reason on the notice,” Moodrow responded quietly.

“What difference does it make?”

“You want my help?”

“Yes. Not for me. For Pat.”

“Well, if you want my help, don’t bullshit me. Just tell me what it says on the notice.”

Persio pushed himself further up in the chair, the effort bringing sweat to his forehead. He was very serious when he turned back to Moodrow, despite a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “It says a lot of things. It says I don’t keep the place up. That I miss rent payments. That I live an immoral life with an illegal roommate. That my illness poses a health hazard to the other tenants. That I’m a slimy faggot who shouldn’t (and needn’t) be tolerated by decent human beings.”

“That’s not a notice,” Moodrow observed. “That’s a fucking book. Is any of it true?”

Persio’s smile finally got the better of him. “Only the last part.”

Moodrow, more comfortable here than he would ever be in Sylvia Kaufman’s apartment, peeled off his coat and sat on the couch across from Persio. “So whatta ya want from me?” he asked genially.

“First things first,” Persio replied. “For some obscure reason, it’s been ages since I’ve been able to assume my Superman identity, so I definitely need your help. But I also understand about the police and
quid pro quo
and, well…Pat saw the guy who hit the old man downstairs. We’re almost a hundred percent sure, but Pat won’t go near the real cops. I swear it’s almost a superstition with him. Like not opening umbrellas in the house. But we decided to talk to you. That was Pat’s decision. He trusts you.”

“You know the details?” Moodrow asked.

“Well, I didn’t actually see the man, but Pat spoke to him. Pat’ll be home any moment, so what I want to do is talk to you about the eviction before he gets here. I think he’d be angry at what I have to say.”

“No problem. Why don’t you get it off your chest. I’m probably gonna wait for Pat, anyway, so it won’t hurt to pass the time with pleasant conversation.”

“There’s no way I can appear in court five or ten times to fight this notice. I don’t have the strength and Pat knows it. He didn’t say what he was going to do, but I’m terrified that he’ll go to Rosenkrantz and try to muscle the fat bastard into dropping the eviction. I don’t want to see Pat in jail before I die. It’s selfish, really, but I don’t give a shit—the best I have is a few months and I want Pat with me. I thought maybe you could talk to Rosenkrantz for us.”

“I don’t mind talking to him for you,” Moodrow answered. “But I’m not a cop anymore. Even if I was, there wouldn’t be any way I could influence a straight guy like this.”

“Please. Do the best you can. I don’t have the energy to fight this.”

Moodrow held up his hand. “Okay. I get the point. I’ll make a definite effort to get the landlord to pull his bullshit eviction notice. Now you wanna tell me about the mugging or do we have to wait for Pat?”

“We already decided to help you,” Persio explained. “Pat and me know what’s going on in the building and the people here don’t deserve it. I mean we’ll never really be part of the building. Not two gay ex-cons in Jackson Heights. But this is a community. A very, very
straight
community, true, but a community nonetheless. What’s going on here is a crime…”

“Look, Louis, I’m in a little bit of a hurry. There’s a meeting about to start downstairs and I wanna listen to what the tenants have to say. Why don’t you fill me in on what you know. I can always talk to Pat later.”

“Fine with me,” Persio shrugged. “Pat saw the guy right before Birnbaum was attacked. The guy was banging on the door where you threw out the dealers. In fact, there was a whole procession of customers and mostly we ignored them, but this asshole kept banging away and Pat finally went out in the hall. He made the guy for a junkie with money, maybe even a part-time user. Pat told him, in a fairly nice way, that the dealers were gone and he should be gone, too. Now tell me if this isn’t the icing on the cake? The asshole gets so turned around, he goes down the stairs instead of the elevator. Those stairs open onto the third floor within twenty feet of the old man’s apartment. I mean it
has
to be the same guy.”

“You said the man was there to buy drugs? How do you know?”

“When Pat told him there was no dope to be bought, the guy didn’t even bother to make an excuse. He got pissed that Pat was throwing him out of the building, but he didn’t try to make himself an innocent. Besides, Pat was a junkie for ten years. You don’t think he can tell?”

“Exactly when did this happen? How close to the assault?”

“Jesus, you’re hard to please. A half hour after Pat confronted the man in the hallway, we heard the sirens. The cops knocked on every door in the building that night.”

“Okay. Enough.” Moodrow stood up, throwing his overcoat across his left arm. “I appreciate the help and I’ll be back after I speak to Rosenkrantz.”

“That’s it?” Persio asked in amazement. “You don’t want a description? You’re not going after this scumbag?”

“Fuck that. Let the cops go after the mugger. I’m sure they have a description from Birnbaum. Ya know, it’s a funny thing, but at first I thought maybe the attack on Birnbaum was deliberate. I didn’t have any good reason to believe this, but I couldn’t get it out of my head. I’m still gonna check it out with the cop who caught the squeal, but right now I’m satisfied that it was violence left over from when the dealers were here. A week from now, everything’ll quiet down.”

“It already has.”

Moodrow grinned. “See what I mean? The problems taking care of itself. Anyway, I’ll either see Rosenkrantz tonight, if he shows up for the meeting, or I’ll run him down in his office tomorrow. Then I’ll be in touch with you. Have a nice night.”

As it turned out, Al Rosenkrantz did attend the emergency meeting of the Jackson Arms Tenants’ Association. He was holding forth when Moodrow made his appearance in Sylvia Kaufman’s apartment, only this time the questions were much more unfriendly and he was sweating profusely. The tenants wanted to know why the lobby wasn’t fixed, where the security was, why the eviction notices kept going out. Rosenkrantz responded by attacking the cops. Crime in New York, he insisted, was out of control. It was up to the police to prevent crime, not real estate management companies. But Precision Management
had
sent an eviction notice to the drug dealers in 4B shortly before they left. Sal Ragozzo had also been served. True, management might have made a mistake in its choice of a superintendent for the building, but the lobby would be repaired and a security desk set up within the week.

Moodrow, sweeping the room professionally, noted the presence of Community Affairs Officer Paul Dunlap, as well as the association’s regulars. Apparently, the attack on Birnbaum had failed to fire up the rest of the tenants. Betty, off by herself, finally caught his eye. She smiled and waved him over.

“I miss anything?” he whispered, sitting beside her.

“Birnbaum was badly beaten. He’s not going to die, but he’s an old man. His daughter was here and she said she was taking him to her home in New Jersey. The cop over there spoke for about two minutes. He said it was a robbery, the kind that happens a hundred times a day in New York, but he didn’t have any suspects. Then Rosenkrantz waddled up. He’s been the target for most of the anger in the room, but he’s holding his own. He keeps insisting that things are going to get better.”

“You think he means it?” Moodrow asked.

“It’s hard to believe that he actually
sent
dealers into the building. This is not the South Bronx. On the other hand, Al Rosenkrantz is definitely a slime ball. No doubt about it.”

“Well, I got a way to sound him out a little without making him too suspicious.” Quickly, Moodrow filled her in on his conversation with Louis Persio. “I’m gonna brace Rosenkrantz as soon as he leaves the apartment. Try to corner him in the lobby. I want you to come with me. So I can hear what your impressions are.”

Betty smiled broadly. She had a wide mouth and when she grinned, her face seemed to explode with pleasure. “Great,” she responded. “Do we get to slap him around?”

“You been watching too many cop movies. Remember, I’m trying to help Persio out and I’m not gonna get a favor by attacking Rosenkrantz. We’ll just talk to the guy and see what he has to say.”

Before Betty could reply, there was a solid knock on Sylvia’s door, the sound of wood on wood. Dunlap, who was nearest the door, opened it to find Mike Birnbaum, his cane raised to give the door another shot. The left side of his face was badly swollen and his skull was heavily bandaged behind the ear, but he was erect and furious. When Porky Dunlap tried to take the old man’s arm, he was pushed away with a contemptuous glance.

“What’d I tell you?” Birnbaum asked triumphantly. “Hoodlums,
gonifs
. The
dreck
of the universe comes in here since Morris sold the building. We didn’t buy when we had the chance and now you see what happens. My own daughter tells me I gotta move to someplace in New Jersey. I’d rather move to Siberia.” He began to hobble toward the front of the room. “I know you told me I shouldn’t talk too much at the meetings, Sylvia, but now I gotta say what’s on my mind. So tell this
putz
to go back to his cave and let me speak.”