Forced Entry (27 page)

The ringing phone pulled him away from his speculations. This would be the last one and he could go to sleep (or at least turn out the light) when this was finished. It was Pat Sheehan, as he’d hoped. Moodrow had left a request for Pat to call when he’d been in Queens that afternoon, but had no real conviction that Sheehan would comply.

“Moodrow?” Sheehan’s voice was sharp and impatient. “It’s Pat Sheehan. What’s up?”

“That’s what I wanna know from you.”

“First, I gotta say thank you for sending that guy around about the eviction. He says Louis don’t have to go to court at all. The lawyer’s gonna take care of it. So thanks, all right?”

Moodrow had no difficulty in reading the reluctance in Sheehan’s voice. As an alumnus of the state penal system, hatred of the police was as much a part of his day-to-day life as the pulse in his wrist and Moodrow accepted that. Not that he wasn’t willing to take advantage of the debt Sheehan owed him.

“I want you to do something for me,” Moodrow said. “If you can. I know you got your hands full with Louis.”

Sheehan was surprised, at first, then relieved to be able to wipe the slate clean, then wary, as befits someone who’d occupied the position both of hunter and hunted many times in his life. “Tell me what ya want, Moodrow. Louis ain’t feelin’ too good and I can’t stay on the phone.”

“First, tell me what the situation’s like in the building now.”

“It’s drug heaven,” Sheehan snorted. “Whatever ya want, right? Crack, crank, blow, dope, dust. It’s all here now. Right in the open. I saw Birnbaum when I came in and he told me you busted someone. I figured it hada be for drugs, because I got approached twice on the way to my apartment.”

“So the dealers are making you for a player?” Moodrow asked innocently.

“Once you done time,” Sheehan observed casually, “it’s like you got a tattoo on ya face. Anyone else who done time could read it the minute he sees ya.”

“That’s gotta be a fucking drag.”

“Cut the crap, Moodrow, and tell me what ya want.”

“All right. Whatever you say.” Moodrow, lost in the details, sipped at his bourbon, his headache forgotten. “Lemme ask you a question, Pat. How do you figure all the drugs got in the building in the first place? Do these dealers got some kinda buzzard radar that they know when a neighborhood’s in trouble? How the fuck did they find their way into Jackson Heights?”

Sheehan took a moment before answering. “It’s a good question,” he admitted, “but I don’t got the faintest idea.”

“Well, I was thinking maybe you could find out. I mean, people talk to you. You listen carefully, there’s no telling what you might hear.”

“I don’t have time for that shit, even if I wanted to become a professional rat. Between my job and Louis, I walk around half-asleep.”

“You don’t have to do anything special.” Moodrow’s voice was soothing, persuasive. “But the people moving in must have something in common. Maybe they all come from the same area. Or they get supplied by the same wholesaler. I don’t know what it’s gonna turn out to be, but I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your eyes open. If somebody wants to talk to ya, let ’em talk for a while. Don’t be so tough.”

“Should I start buying dope again, too?”

“Hey, Pat, whatta ya think it’s about?” Moodrow finally allowed the irritation to creep into his voice. “You think it’s about me being a hot shit and making some kinda big collar? No way, man. This is about Sylvia Kaufman lying on the floor with a busted hip while the room fills up with smoke. Her fucking bedroom, man. Where she has a right to be safe from murderers. When was the last time you spoke to her? Two days ago? Three? Four? Now she’s in a coffin and some torch is havin’ a party to celebrate the success of his enterprise.”

“That ain’t right, Moodrow,” Sheehan insisted angrily. “Sylvia was okay to me and Louis, but that don’t mean I’m in her debt. She wasn’t watchin’ my back.”

“Okay,” Moodrow apologized. “I don’t mean to say that you have an actual obligation to Sylvia Kaufman. But you have an obligation to me and I’m calling it in. Louis said he’d help me out if I helped you out, and I did what he asked. Now it’s your turn.”

“You talk good, Moodrow. For a man that’s fulla shit. Meanwhile, I’m gonna help you, anyway. I’m gonna do it because I owe you, and because Sylvia was decent to me and Louis when a lotta people treated us like garbage. But mostly I’m gonna do it because this is our home. Ya know, in the joint, the worst insult a con could give another con is to violate the man’s turf. To piss on his cot or trash his cell with garbage. Then it’s automatic you gotta do something about it, ’cause if you don’t, you’ll be washin’ underwear for the rest of your bit.”

T
HERE COULD HAVE BEEN
ten thousand dealers in the Jackson Arms and it wouldn’t have helped Talker Purdy. There could have been a dealer in every doorway, even the door where the old fuck lived, the one who got Rudy-Bicho busted, and it still wouldn’t have helped. In fact, the Jackson Arms could have been the dope center of the fucking universe and Talker Purdy would still be shaking, still sweating, still shivering as if in the grip of a violent, unrelenting fever, because Talker Purdy was dead broke.

“Maricón!”
Talker Purdy screamed at the bare walls. He knew that time was running out and he had to decide what to do before he couldn’t do anything. The muscles in his back were tightening down, pulling his shoulderblades toward his spine—by evening, they’d be twisted into knots the size of golf balls. Already, his skin crawled like an army of ants was marching just below the surface. He kept touching himself to make sure his skin was still smooth. In the end, if he had to do it, had to kick, his crawling skin would be the worst symptom. And the last to go.

But the deal that
really
bothered him, and what made it so hard for him to concentrate long enough to make a decision about what to do, was that it just wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair right from the first go-round. For instance, why did Rudy-Bicho get arrested? The old fuck came right up to Rudy; Rudy didn’t go to the old fuck. And Rudy didn’t even hurt the old fuck, either, just taught him a little bit about soft and hard. Weren’t he and Rudy in the lobby of their own building? Weren’t they minding their own business? Not hurting
nobody
? The pig shouldn’t have arrested Rudy-Bicho or found out that he was on parole, so that Rudy’s bullshit bust meant two weeks at Rikers waiting for a parole hearing. No way. It just wasn’t fair.

Talker thought his biggest problem was that everything belonged to Rudy. (In a way, even
Talker
belonged to Rudy.) Rudy-Bicho was the one connected to the wiseguy in Bensonhurst. He was the one who set them up in their apartment and went downstairs to get the dope (
before
they needed it; Talker hadn’t been sick in months). And Rudy had introduced him to a new kind of bitch—crack whores who spread their legs and left them spread as long as the pipe continued to crackle and spit. Thinking about them, Talker nearly managed a smile. They were fine young bitches just out of their mamas’ kitchens. Do
anything
for that big rock candy mountain.

Unfortunately, Rudy-Bicho kept the money, too. Not that he was trying to cheat Talker Purdy. It was mostly because Rudy was reliable and wouldn’t do anything stupid with it (like leaving it taped to the bottom of a table for another junkie to rip off), but also because Talker Purdy trusted his partner completely. Talker knew Rudy-Bicho was standup cold, because they’d watched each other’s backs the time Talker did a hard bit upstate. Talker and Rudy had been there for each other in the most totally fucked-up situations; situations where they could
definitely
get themselves killed. After that, if your name is Talker Purdy, you trust your partner enough to let him hold the money. And you never think about what you’ll do if he gets busted and you’ve been calling Rikers every day and the pigs claim they never heard of Rudolfo Ruiz. And likewise the fucking Men’s House of Detention in Brooklyn and in the Bronx. And you
know
there’s no way you can get to the main stash, either. It doesn’t matter that you’re so fucking sick, your whole body is crawling with ants underneath the skin.

Thinking about it (and especially about the old fuck who dissed Rudy-Bicho until he
had
to do something) finally drove Talker Purdy into a fury. Talker was very slow to anger. He was just bright enough to know that anger made him even stupider, made him liable to do stupid things which resulted in immediate punishment. (Like the time he really hurt the kid in junior high school. Like hurting the kid with broken glass and a metal table and whatever was handy and doing it right in the cafeteria where the whole school could enjoy the show.) It wasn’t until he ended up in a courtroom (after which, despite a probationary sentence, his mom and her boyfriend had kicked the living shit out of him), that he finally calmed down, allowing himself to fall under the direction of quicker, smarter criminals like Rudy-Bicho Ruiz.

But getting so angry the tips of his pale ears flamed with frustration didn’t help Talker Purdy decide what to do about being sick. It didn’t absorb the snot running in a thin stream from both nostrils. There was only one cure for the condition of being sick and that was dope. For the five hundredth time, he wished for Rudy-Bicho to be there. For Rudy to explain a plan, so he didn’t have to think one up by himself.

“I have to go do what I have to do,” Talker said aloud, finally deciding. “I ain’ gonna get sick.” He shook his head. “No way, man. Fuck tha’ shit.” He walked, much more calmly, from the kitchen into the bedroom, opened the second drawer of the bureau, and dug under the pile of T-shirts for the two 9mm automatics. It was the first thing Talker Purdy did that Rudy had always done for him. He felt like a kid in church, handling the priests’ robes, as he sat at the edge of the bed and laid the guns on his lap. They were identical Berettas, big expensive handguns with barrels that could make a vic shit his pants in a minute.

“If you ever get to shoot someone,” Rudy-Bicho had told him again and again, “you gonna see some blood from all the way inside blow right out through his back.” Rudy called the automatics “one-shot tools” because they were so powerful you didn’t need to make sure the victim was helpless.

Talker lifted one of the pistols, the one with an ornate T burned into the walnut grip (Rudy had done that for Talker; he’d done his own with interlocked Rs), jacked a round into the chamber, then rose to look at himself in the mirror. His reflection frightened him—his face was drawn, his cheekbones hollow, his skin gray. It was not a face to make someone afraid, unless
you
were its owner. Then what you felt was goddamn panic.

He pushed the gun into the waistband of his trousers, sliding it down into the small of his back and covering it with his shirt, then left the apartment. After seeing his face in the mirror, he was convinced there was nothing to do, but get hold of the magic powder that would restore his health. There wasn’t any question about where he had to go. He had to go downstairs where the dope was.

Johnny Calderone, knowing nothing of Talker Purdy’s sudden poverty, welcomed him with a big grin, pulling the door wide. “Talker, baby,” he cried, “come on in. I heard about Rudy. What a fucking bad break. I swear, man, the scumbags who live in this building think who the fuck they are. Somebody oughta teach the cocksuckers a fuckin’ lesson. Check it out. So what could I do ya for?”

“I need some bags, man,” Talker said hoarsely.

“This I already know,” Calderone returned, his smile firmly in place. “Check it out. Ya look like death warmed over. How many?”

“I need a few bundles. Maybe thirty bags.”

Johnny Calderone was not a trusting man. He had a hole cut in his front door and he usually didn’t let junkies into his apartment; he accepted money through the hole before passing out the heroin. But he’d known Rudy for years and Talker had been running with Rudy for more than six months and sometimes you have to be a little bit human, even if you
are
engaged in a fiendish profession. “No problem, baby. Check out a chair and I’ll be right back.”

He strolled casually into the bathroom, to the medicine chest which held his stash of heroin. Though expecting nothing, he knew, as a professional, that he was in bad trouble as soon as Talker Purdy followed him inside; he knew he was in deep, deep shit even before he turned to confront the Beretta.

“Hey, man,” Calderone said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “Check it out. Ya don’t need that piece. I wouldn’t let a friend of mine stay sick. Whatta ya think, I’m some kinda scumbag?” He opened his clenched fist to display the small bags of dope. “Check it out, Talker. My special brand: Smiley D. The absolute mother-fuckin’ best, right? Take it, baby. Go ahead. Take it upstairs and get well. You can tighten me up whenever you’re fresh. I’m in no hurry.”

Talker didn’t make a decision before he pulled the trigger. At least, he didn’t
remember
making a decision. For sure, the piece jumped in his hand. It jumped in his hand and Johnny Calderone jumped back with a little red rose in his chest like the two of them (the gun and Johnny Calderone) were doing a dance.

“Hey, Rudy, man,” Talker whispered, “you was right about tha’ one-shot shit. The
maricón
bastard ain’ movin’. But how come it din’ make no blood in the back?”

In fact, the slug had exploded inside Johnny Calderone’s chest, slashing through his heart, lungs, kidney, and spleen. There was a great deal of internal bleeding, but as there was no exit wound, the blood had filled the abdominal cavity, only belatedly oozing through the small hole in Calderone’s chest. Talker dipped his finger in the blood, pushing his finger a little way into the wound. He had never shot anyone before (though, maybe, even here, he didn’t actually
decide
; it was more like an accident) and he wondered what he was supposed to feel.

But all he felt was sick. Casually, as if the gun had made a whisper instead of crashing so loud in the little bathroom it still hurt his ears, he took the heroin out of Calderone’s hand, then went to the cabinet to scoop up the rest. It wasn’t as much as he’d hoped for—Calderone most likely had a second stash somewhere else in the building—ten bundles often bags each. Enough for about five days, if he stretched it thin.