Forced Entry (41 page)

She’d spent most of her life working in what she liked to call “the justice industry,” but her work had been with the criminals and not the victims and now she was a victim herself. By her own characterization, her career had involved nothing more than doing the dirty work necessary to keep the country going, to keep the Constitution strong. There are very few places in the world where “rights” have any meaning larger than the power flowing naturally from the barrel of a gun; or where individuals have more “rights” than a single ant in an ant heap. Yet, in Betty’s mind, individual rights were the abstractions that defined Western civilization, and the reality of a lawyer for every criminal (even a lawyer overburdened with work) was just as important to the existence of her country as the cops and District Attorneys who protected the victims.

But now she was an undeniable victim. Her sympathy for defendants had disappeared like footprints in a blizzard, and she was left with an enormous void. No matter how hard she tried, the void kept filling with anger; it seemed that anger was the only emotion that
could
fill that particular emptiness. The anger made her afraid, as did the loss of the assumptions which made up the foundation of her intellectual life.

If he’d been home, Moodrow could have told her how natural, how common, these emotions were. The drama of revenge, no matter how unlikely,
always
played itself out after a violent crime. In the days and weeks following an attack, the victim reworked the scene until the terror that accompanied helplessness and violence was finally smoothed by time. Of course, Betty would eventually return to something approximating her usual equilibrium; she was a strong woman with a well-established system of values. But for the present, she was compelled to imagine the most basic of human motivations: revenge.

When Moodrow finally did arrive, at six thirty, Betty was seated at the kitchen table imagining a confrontation with Al Rosenkrantz, in which Rosenkrantz, already half-dead (having had his arms and legs shot off with a pistol the size of a cannon) was begging for mercy. As Moodrow came through the door, she reluctantly abandoned her daydream and looked up expectantly.

“Any luck?” she asked.

“Nothin’.” Moodrow poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. “But me and Jim’ll get him. And we’ll get the prick who sent him.”

“How long is that supposed to take?” Betty asked, her voice tentative.

“I can’t say,” Moodrow admitted. “Could easy be the cops’ll get to him before we do.”

Betty shifted in her seat; she was wearing a blue terry robe over a short cotton nightgown and her eyes were red with insomnia. “What are you going to do when you catch him?”

“Babbit? I’m gonna ask him a few questions and then I’m gonna hand him over to the cops. It turns out the print they took off the vial had enough points to go into evidence. Juries love fingerprints.”

“What if he pleads?” she persisted.

“You’re a plea bargainer—what do
you
think? How’s the DA gonna handle a killer arsonist?”

“Probably take second degree murder. Drop the arson counts.”

“And what’s the penalty for second degree murder?”

“Twenty-five to life.”

“That means he’s gotta do twenty years minimum and he’ll probably do thirty. Babbit is thirty-two years old, so by the time he comes out, he’ll be sixty-two. With that kind of time hanging over his head, I don’t feel a strong need to get personally involved in his punishment. Not that I wouldn’t prefer seein’ the skell fry in the electric chair until his skin crackled, but whatta ya gonna do, right?”

Betty stared up at him. “I want to do it myself,” she announced. “I keep dreaming about finding him and the man who sent him and every time I have the dream, it’s me who administers the punishment.”

“Judge, jury, and executioner?” Moodrow smiled. “I was there myself, once. When it was a question of personal revenge. That’s what came back to me a few days ago.
Kill the fuckers
.
Kill ’em!
All I could think of was how bad I fucked it up. How I put my head in the sand and saw what I wanted to see when the worst rookie asshole would of known what was going on. I was saying to myself, “What if I would of done this? What if I would of done that? Then they might all be alive. Inez and Sylvia and the kid they had in the van.” He stopped for a second and sipped at his coffee. “But I must be gettin’ old or somethin’, because I’m lost in it now—lost in the hunt—or maybe talking to you made it better. Now my revenge is catching the mutts. Catching them and turning them over to the lawyers and the courtrooms. That’s all the revenge I’m allowed and that’s what I’m gonna settle for.” He giggled softly. “Unless, of course, there’s some kinda reason why the perp can’t be prosecuted. Like, for instance, if there’s no direct evidence of an undeniably guilty fucking perp’s undeniable fucking guilt. That would present another problem altogether.”

As they went off to bed together, to make love and, then, to sleep, Betty had a sudden flash of illumination. “The worst part,” she thought, “is that the anger will go away. The anger will retreat and harden into something permanent and ugly. Something far removed from the original terror.”

It was early afternoon before Moodrow stirred in response to someone pounding at his door. For a moment, he was tempted to push his head into the pillow and wait for the noise to go away. But as he was expecting “the big break” to make its appearance at any time, he felt morally obliged not to hide until it went away. “The big break” cracking its fist into his front door turned out to be a thoroughly annoyed Pat Sheehan. Dressed in black jeans, a gray T-shirt, and an olive fatigue jacket, he looked every inch the street junkie.

“What the fuck is the matter with you?” Sheehan stared at the enormous man standing in his underwear.

“I was sleeping,” Moodrow explained.

“It’s one o’clock in the afternoon.”

Moodrow yawned himself awake, then took a closer look at Pat Sheehan. He was looking for any sign that Sheehan, who’d been on the streets for several days, was back to using drugs. Sheehan, without being asked, shrugged off his jacket, revealing bare arms free of fresh needle marks.

“I take it you didn’t come here to pass the time of day,” Moodrow said casually.

“I found Babbit,” Sheehan announced. His eyes were swollen and tired.

“Where?”

“He lives up in the northern end of Manhattan. Inwood.”

“Let’s go make some coffee. I gotta get myself awake.”

Moodrow, trailing Pat Sheehan in his wake, trudged through the living room to find Betty already waiting in the kitchen.

“What happened?” she asked, nodding to Pat Sheehan.

“I found Babbit,” Sheehan announced.

“How’d you do it?”

“Easy. I always kept in touch with a few of the cons I did my bit with, so I just went and paid a visit. After a few drinks, me and the boys started talkin’ about the good old days. Nat’rally, that turns to somethin’ like, ‘Hey, you remember that crazy fuckin’ torch who burned up Rufus Johnson?’ Then some dude goes, ‘Yeah. Yeah. I see him around once in a while. He’s a pro, now. Hangs out at a topless joint called the Sizzle Club. On Broadway around 104th Street.’ So I run up there and wait a couple of nights till he shows, then follow him back to his apartment. I tell ya the truth, the whole thing didn’t amount to no big deal. It just took a long time.”

“Did he recognize you?” Moodrow asked.

“He saw me, but I don’t think he knows who I am. He got out less than a year after I arrived and I wasn’t one of the famous cons. In fact, I made it my goal to keep away from maniacs like Babbit as much as possible, so it ain’t too surprisin’ that he don’t know me.”

Betty poured out three cups of coffee and they waited in silence until Moodrow, fully dressed, came back inside, drained his cup, then turned to Pat Sheehan.

“I think I need a favor, Pat,” he said.

“Ain’t we even yet?”

“We’re even,” Moodrow admitted, “but I still got a problem. My ex-partner, Jim Tilley, can’t make it. He’s up in Albany trying to execute a fugitive warrant.”

“I thought he was on vacation for the next few days,” Betty said.

“In the department, you’re only on vacation until they say you’re not. The captain didn’t have anyone else, so he called up Jim and that was that. Rose says he won’t be back until tomorrow. And that’s if the skell’s lawyer doesn’t contest the warrant.”

“So whatta ya want from me?” Sheehan asked.

“I want ya to pretend to be a cop while I interrogate Babbit. He’ll sit for it better if he thinks you’re a cop.”

“Why don’t you be the cop?”

“Well, see, after he rats out the guy who ordered the fire, I wanna hand him over to the real cops, but I don’t want him sayin’ I impersonated an officer.”

Sheehan sat straight up in his chair. “What about me? I’d do ten years if they caught me with a badge.”

“You’re gonna be long gone before the cops get there. Let’s face it, Pat, I could most likely do it by myself, but havin’ you there helps in a lot of ways. Babbit’s no punk. He’s done hard time and I don’t know what kinda problems I’m gonna run into. With another pair of hands, at least I win the psychological battle.”

Moodrow, taking Sheehan’s silence for agreement, turned to Betty. “I guess I gotta offer you the chance to come along,” he said, “but I’m warning you that I may have to do things you don’t wanna see. And I’m also telling you it’ll get better if you wait it out. Then you can go back to Legal Aid and your regular life. On the other hand, if you go with us, you’re gonna have to pretend not to see things you’ve spent your whole life fighting.”

Betty touched Moodrow’s lips with her finger. For a moment, they were the only two people in the room. “I can’t go,” she said. “I love you too much to take a chance. It’s better if I keep on seeing the best side of you. But I still want you to get them. Get Babbit and get the one who sent the brothers. I don’t think I’ll ever feel right until they’re…” She fumbled for a word to describe how she felt, then realized that all serious possibilities were extremely violent. “Until they’re gone,” she finally said.

M
AURICE BABBIT WAS DREAMING
of fire when Stanley Moodrow pounded on his door. He was dreaming that he was a child again, setting trail fires in the backyard grass. Trail fires were great fun, but they required some kind of fuel. Gasoline, kerosene, alcohol, lighter fluid, cleaning fluid, turpentine—little Maurice was a master of deception, stealing flammable liquids and setting out complex trails like other kids stacked rows of dominoes on a kitchen table.

He wasn’t so little in this dream, though. He was older, at an age when he’d already abandoned trail fires. But he didn’t notice this oddity, because he was focusing his concentration on making the trail. It was a very ambitious trail. Somehow, he’d gotten hold of five gallons of gasoline and he was creating an enormous spiral that began at the very center of the yard and extended almost to the back porch. The arm of the spiral was narrow, the blades of grass only wet enough to keep the line of fire moving toward the drenched circle of grass where four mice, maddened by the sharp smell of gasoline, swarmed over the bars of their cage.

The mice had been a Christmas present from his parents; they had been given at the urging of Maurice’s therapist, who’d felt that Maurice needed to bond to something. If he couldn’t come close to another human being (not even his eternally perplexed mother who loved her only child more than she loved herself), perhaps he’d be able to love a creature as absolutely nonthreatening as the tiny mice his grinning father brought home to him.

But Maurice hadn’t loved the mice any more than he loved the grass or the gasoline. They were only the tools he needed to complete his given task. Of course, Maurice had no clear idea why his given task had been given to him, but, not being especially reflective, he contented himself with knowing what the task was. Method was Babbit’s strong point, anyway; he was always calm and careful when he made a fire, no matter how small and insignificant the blaze. Even in his dream, he was carefully pouring the gas—laying out a trail while imagining the quick rush of the flame as it tore along an ever-narrowing circle, as it finally exploded outward, as the cloud of oily black smoke (along with the souls of four white mice) rushed toward the heavens.

The emotions stirred up by his expectations were especially intense, which explained Babbit’s reaction to the pounding at his door. He was confused for a moment, trying to bring himself back to adulthood, to New York City, then he was angry.

“Fuck you, Boris,” Babbit screamed. “Come back later. The garbagemen ain’t never gonna show up on a fuckin’ Saturday.”

But the pounding actually increased, as if the super knew that he could beat the door forever without disturbing the other tenants, and Maurice finally surrendered to the inevitable. Stepping into his pants and shoes, he quickly substituted Boris Krakov, the superintendent, for the mice in his dream.

“What’re you, nuts?” Babbit screamed as he opened the door. He was fully prepared to add a long description of Krakov’s Russian ancestors, but Moodrow’s enormous body drew all his attention. Even while his mind screamed,
COP! COP! COP!
, his mouth grunted, “Wha? Wha? Wha?”

Then Pat Sheehan popped up alongside Moodrow’s left arm with a badge in his hand, shouting the word, “Police.” He pushed Maurice back into the room, he
followed
Maurice into the apartment. It was going to be very bad—the big cop was smiling and Maurice figured the smile was meant to frighten him, but then the big cop said, “See, it ain’t as hard as it looks,” and
that
made no sense at
all
.

“What’s your name?” the little cop shouted.

“How long you been living here?” the big cop roared.

“Do ya like ta set fires, ya little fuck?”

“Why’d you go to Queens?”

“Ya know how much time you can do for an arson-murder in New York State?”

Maurice continued to back away and the two cops continued to advance, not grabbing for him, but not giving him enough room to turn and run either. He backed through the rubble crowding his apartment, through stacks of yellow newspapers, twisted toy trucks and rusted cars, headless watersoaked dolls. He noted the drums of gasoline against the wall, the propane torch and the flamethrower he should have been given in Vietnam, but had had to make himself from a ten-pound can of pickles, a plumbing valve, and a cylinder of oxygen. Everything was out of reach; the men facing him were too big, too strong.