Forced Entry (24 page)

Rudy-Bicho reached over to take the much larger man’s shirt in his hand, twisting it as he pulled his protégé closer. “How come you go in the joint and you don’ learn nothin’? These people look at you like that, they disrespect you,
maricón
. You let them disrespect you today, tomorrow they have their
bichos
so far up your
culo
, you gonna be chokin’ from it.”

“Excuse me! Excuse me!”

Talker Purdy, jarred by the loud voice, was even more startled by the apparition limping toward him. He made the old man for a poppy love, for the kind of victim he’d often stalked before he’d connected with Rudy-Bicho and taken up armed robbery. In Talker’s world, rabbits didn’t approach lions.

“You got business here, you should make a lounge out of this lobby?” the same figure demanded.

Then a second man came over, one of those weird spics who wore a suit to work. “What is your business here?” the suit demanded.

“We live here,” Talker Purdy explained patiently. He was playing for time while he tried to get a handle on the situation. “We’re neighbors.”

“
Chinga tu madre
, mother-fucker,” Rudy-Bicho said. His voice took on a prison-sharp edge which (though it went unrecognized by Mike Birnbaum and Andre Almeyda) alerted Talker Purdy to the fact that he was supposed to get mad. “How come you got the balls,” Rudy-Bicho continued, “to come over here and talk to me? A bug comes and talks to me and I gotta put up with this shit? Don’ you know, Senor Whiteman, that I could crackle you up like a fuckin’
cucaracha
?”

When Stanley Moodrow and Paul Dunlap entered the lobby of the Jackson Arms, they saw exactly the same phenomenon, yet they reacted quite differently. What they saw was an Hispanic male, approximately twenty years of age, five foot ten inches tall, 165 pounds, with one hand around the throat of an elderly white male, approximately five foot two inches tall, 120 pounds. There were two other males, one Hispanic, approximately thirty-five years old, and one white, approximately twenty years old. The latter pair were standing face to face, as if just about to enter combat.

Paul Dunlap, whose contact with violence was limited to breaking up fights between drunken Legionnaires, was uncertain. He stopped for a moment, trying to get a handle on the situation. Stanley Moodrow, on the other hand, unbuttoned his jacket before the door closed behind him, bellowing, “Stop! Right now! You, mother-fucker! I’m talkin’ to
you
!” He pointed to Rudy-Bicho with his left hand. “Let that man go or I’ll rip ya fucking heart out. Right the fuck now, faggot. And you, too.” This time he pointed at Talker Purdy, who was just beginning to anger. “Sit ya fucking ass down and shut off the goddamn radio. Here, fuck it, I’ll shut it off myself.” He took two steps across the lobby and drove the toe of his brown wing tips through the radio’s speaker.

The initial silence was deafening. As Moodrow had hoped, it froze the participants in their tracks. In his estimation, he had come upon a scene that was almost, but not quite, out of control and his best move was to keep the lid on. Rudy-Bicho (making the two enormous men for cops) released Mike Birnbaum, who staggered back several steps. Andre Almeyda, who’d been eagerly closing with Talker Purdy, stopped in his tracks. Talker Purdy, confused and brokenhearted, stared at his radio with evident surprise.

“Dunlap?” Moodrow’s sharp voice broke the momentary silence.

“Right behind you.” Dunlap elbowed his way between Moodrow and Purdy, announcing, “Assume the position, asshole,” in the most bored voice he could muster.

Moodrow turned immediately and walked across to Rudy-Bicho Ruiz, who reacted by folding his arms across the chest. “The
maricón
attack me and I’m defendin’ myself. I wasn’t doin’ nothin’ when he attack me. He attack me for nothin’.”

Moodrow, though he took in the words, paid no attention whatsoever. He wasn’t looking for explanations; he’d just witnessed a felony and had absolutely no interest in explanations until the perpetrator was properly secured. Dominating the smaller man with his sheer bulk, he yanked Ruiz erect and spun him toward the wall, talking all the while. “Get up against it, prick. Get your fucking legs back. You make one twitch, I’m gonna crack your neck.” His hands were moving over Ruiz’s body, searching for a weapon, before he stopped speaking. Finding nothing, he yanked the man’s arms behind his back and cuffed him tightly.

“You’re under arrest,” he began automatically, forgetting that he had no powers of arrest and that he wasn’t a cop and that the loss of those powers was the reason why Paul Dunlap was with him. “You have the right to remain silent. If you choose to speak, anything you say can be used against you.” He went through the whole speech while he searched Ruiz down to his underwear and his socks. Having found no weapon, he was hoping for drugs, but, again, he was disappointed. Still, there was no question about the assault. It would stand up and if the man had any serious priors or if he was on parole, he might do real time.

“So what’s going on here?” Moodrow, much quieter now that the scene was under control, asked Mike Birnbaum.

“I come into
my
lobby and see two animals they wouldn’t even let in a zoo.” He wanted to say, “two spics” (if he’d been with his friend, Paul Reilly, the ex-fireman, he would have), but Andre Almeyda was an ally, so he held himself in check. “Nat’rally, I ask myself what they’re doing here. My lobby don’t look like the Waldorf Astoria. My lobby don’t look like the jail on Rikers Island, where these animals probably came from. Maybe they think it’s a day care center? Maybe they think they’re in
shul
? Maybe they’re looking for a
minyan
?”

“Mike,” Moodrow brought the old man up short. “Do me a favor and get to the point.”

Birnbaum tossed Moodrow his angriest look, but got only a blank stare in return. “I went up to this
macher
here.” He pointed to Ruiz. “I asked him what he thought he was doing in my lobby and he grabbed me by the throat without so much as a word.”

“That’s true,” Andre Almeyda chimed in. “I was coming from the mail and I see it happening. Mike didn’ do nothing to this guy.”

“We live here, too!” Talker Purdy suddenly cried out. “We’re neighbors.” The frustration was coming down on him hard. He was an easy-going man, but if they took Rudy-Bicho away, he wouldn’t be able to do the jobs anymore. And he wouldn’t have any good dope, either. In fact, without Rudy-Bicho’s connection in Brooklyn, he’d most likely have to take up his old profession, which policemen like to refer to as “opportunistic thief.”

“Tell me exactly what happened,” Dunlap asked Andre Almeyda. “Especially about this one.” He jerked his head toward Purdy.

As Andre launched into a detailed explanation of the assault (an explanation which, incidentally, exonerated Talker Purdy), the lobby began to fill with curious tenants. Moodrow’s first instinct was to protect the crime scene, but after glancing over at Dunlap, who seemed to be enjoying the show, he allowed the witnesses to assemble. Thus, almost a dozen tenants were present when Anton Kricic, his luminous, orange-red hair flaming in all directions, emerged from his first floor apartment to confront Moodrow and Dunlap.

“This man has as much right to be here as any resident,” Kricic screamed. He was extremely tall, taller than Moodrow, but stick-thin, with a narrow face framed by a halo of very curly, very long hair.

Dunlap put up a hand to stop the apparition. “What’re you talking about?” he asked, innocently.

“You have no authority to put this man out. He’s a human being with a right to shelter. You can’t put him on the street again.” Kricic, though he stopped coming forward, tried to make it clear that he was not about to be bullied by a couple of middle-aged cops. Not with this many witnesses handy.

“What’s your name?” Moodrow asked quietly. He was beginning to get the feeling that he’d been out-maneuvered again, that something new was sneaking up on him, and the feeling was making him very depressed.

“Anton Kricic,” Kricic announced proudly. “I live in apartment 1F In fact, my name is already on the mailbox.”

“Do you have a lease?” Moodrow asked.

“That’s not your business,” Kricic shouted.

“This man is under arrest for an assault,” Dunlap explained angrily. He didn’t care to be told that he had no authority any more than Moodrow did. “It has nothing to do with tenants and landlords. Now, I’m telling you to step back. I’m directly ordering you to remove yourself from the crime scene. If you don’t, I’m going to place you under arrest for hindering a police officer, which is a D Felony. The penalty for commission of a D Felony is an indeterminate sentence of up to seven years in prison. Now move your ass outta here.”

Kricic sneered, though he did, in fact, step away from Dunlap. His purpose in coming out had been to confront the other tenants with the reality of his existence. He had hoped, of course, that the arrest had something to do with the fact that Purdy and Ruiz were squatters with no legal right to their apartments, but he settled for the confused looks on the faces of his neighbors as he walked back to his apartment unmolested. Once they realized that he was living rent-free, they would protest to the landlord, who would move to kick him and the other squatters out. That would be a great day for the homeless: the day when the media chronicled the squatters’ physical eviction from warehoused apartments the landlord was deliberately keeping off the market.

Back in the lobby, Dunlap stepped closer to Moodrow, raising his eyebrows in a silent question.

“Forget about him,” Moodrow said calmly. “We’ll look into Anton Kricic later. As for this mutt…” He gave Ruiz a little tug, pulling him closer. “Call the One One Five and get a sector car down here. Give the collar to whoever shows up. Let ’em get statements from Andre and Mike and use them to write up the complaint. We can act as witnesses, but let’s not get trapped down at Central Booking. Let the uniforms sit around all day. We got a lotta work to do and it’s shaping up to be a very bad day.”

A
S SOON AS THE
two patrolmen had arrived and been briefed, Moodrow and Dunlap walked from the lobby to Sylvia Kaufman’s apartment, their original destination when they’d happened upon Birnbaum and Ruiz. It was an obligatory visit for Moodrow, in light of his relationship to Betty Haluka and the Jackson Arms, but he didn’t see himself as an investigator. Nor was he going as a friend of the dead woman. He was occupying an uneasy middle ground, a position he’d occupied many times in the course of his policeman’s life. His best bet was to understand himself as a simple acquaintance (as Dunlap was doing), but the dual anger he felt (with himself for playing the fool and with men who kill with no regard for the manifest innocence of their victims) was too powerful to allow him that refuge.

Somebody had put up a card table outside the apartment door, and set a carafe of coffee on it. A smallish, middle-aged man sat on a kitchen chair by the table. “Hello,” he said, smiling up at them. “I’m Herb Belcher. Sylvia Kaufman was my mother-in-law. I suppose one of you must be Stanley Moodrow. Betty’s boyfriend.”

He stuck out a hand and Moodrow shook it briefly before introducing Dunlap. “Betty’s inside. Are you going in?” Belcher asked.

“Yeah,” Moodrow answered. “We’re not gonna be long, though.”

The first thing Moodrow saw, after ducking into the apartment, was a thick candle burning in a glass cylinder. It reminded him of the Russian Orthodox Church where he’d gone as a boy. Even the smell of smoke was like the smell of the incense pouring from the metal censer swung by the priest. Then he remembered the last time he’d been inside a church; not surprisingly, it was at the last funeral he’d attended. A thought popped up in his mind: this can’t be the same, because you didn’t really know Sylvia Kaufman. Followed quickly by: it
never
should have happened.

Marilyn Belcher, who had been Marilyn Kaufman prior to setting off for UCLA twenty years before, a heavyset, graying woman, was sitting on a low stool when Moodrow walked into the room. Betty was kneeling beside her on the rug and both were crying. Marilyn wore a dark gray dress decorated only by a torn black ribbon pinned below her left shoulder. She was in her stocking feet, her face free of makeup. Her hair, which had been cut and feathered so carefully in a Santa Barbara salon a week before, was barely combed now.

Later, Betty would tell Moodrow that Marilyn’s grief, already compounded by the sudden, violent nature of her mother’s death, had been aggravated by the years she and her mother had spent apart; Marilyn was blaming both herself and her husband for lost opportunities. At the time, however, Moodrow saw only the face of a woman made frantic by grief, a woman very near to tearing at her own flesh. The emotion was so strong, it stopped him as soon as he entered the room. It stood in his way and held him back, like the force field in a Hollywood science-fiction movie.

Sergeant Paul Dunlap (which is the way he introduced himself to Marilyn Belcher), on the other hand, had attended more than a hundred funerals in his official capacity as Community Affairs Officer. He walked directly to the women and began to offer his condolences in a strong, clear, hearty-Irish voice. “I’m so sorry,” he began.

If Betty hadn’t come over and taken Moodrow’s hand, he might have spun on his heel and walked out of the apartment. He’d turned his head away from Marilyn an instant after reading her grief, preferring to concentrate on the fruit and cake displayed on a coffee table, the white sheets covering the mirrors, the sharp, destructive odor of the smoke. The smell of smoke dominated the apartment; it stung Moodrow’s eyes and burned his nostrils, reminding him of the job ahead.

“Don’t stay long,” Betty, an unconscious angel of mercy, whispered. “Marilyn and I need to talk.”

The smell of smoke, powerful as it was in the apartment upstairs, was far worse in the basement. It rushed over Moodrow and Dunlap as soon as the elevator door opened, causing both to jerk their heads away from the open door as if they’d just come upon a moving rat in a narrow corridor.