Piece of the Action (19 page)

The doorbell interrupted his thoughts. He answered it, half-expecting to discover Greta Bloom returning for a second assault, but found a smiling Allen Epstein, instead.

“Just like the old days. Right, Stanley? You ready for some road work?”

Moodrow managed a smile. “C’mon in, Sarge. You want coffee?”

“Sounds good to me.”

Moodrow poured Epstein a mug of coffee, then topped off his own mug. Already depleted by Greta’s visit, he launched into his story, detailing the events following his rise to the rank of detective, third grade.

“The thing of it is, Sarge,” he concluded, “I don’t want the money or the bullshit that goes with it. I just wish I could see a way to get out from under without screwing up the rest of my life.”

Epstein took the time to put his thoughts together. He’d dealt with a lot of would-be fighters in his role as trainer-manager of the Manhattan South Boxing Club. Moodrow wasn’t the only one who’d come to the ring full of ambition. But Epstein had never met a cop
or
a fighter as determined as Stanley Moodrow. It both surprised and saddened him to find his protégé floundering.

“Ya wanna hear something funny, Stanley?”

“Anything.”

“Me, I don’t take a dime. As a sergeant, I’m entitled to my piece of the pad, but I told the lieutenant to leave me out of it. He didn’t like it, but there was nothing he could do. That’s because I got my rank through civil service. Now, I’m not saying that I’m better than anyone else. It’s just that I see a day coming when the pad is gonna explode in everyone’s face. Sooner or later, some politician is gonna run through the department with a machine gun and I don’t wanna get mowed down. It’s happened so many times in the past that it’s gotta happen again. It’s
gotta.
Cops talk about ‘clean money’ and ‘dirty money,’ but the politicians only see cameras and votes.”

“Sarge …”

“Wait a second. I’m not finished, yet. The way I see it, your problem isn’t with Patero or with the pad, either. Your problem’s with your girlfriend.”

Moodrow snorted. “Ya wanna know something, Sarge, you’re a better psychiatrist than you are a trainer. I could tell Pat Cohan to go fuck himself, but how do I explain it to Kate? How do I tell her that her father’s a crook? Kate worships her old man.”

“When are you getting married?”

“June fifteenth.”

“You’re gonna do it in a church, right? In a Catholic church?”

Moodrow smiled again. “Kate’s religious.
Very
religious.”

“So, once you’re married, you’re married forever, right?”

“What’s the point?”

“The point is that you have to develop a strategy. And it has to be long-term. Right now, Cohan’s holding an axe over your head. But after you’re married, the axe is in
your
hands. Catholics marry for life. You wanna pick up stakes and move a thousand miles away, Kate’s gonna figure it’s her religious duty to go with you. It’s just a matter of holding out. And
not
getting used to the money.”

Moodrow shook his head in wonder. “You’re a devious bastard, Sarge. But what about the Playtex Burglar? What do I do if they ask me to make another ‘arrest’?”

“Look, Stanley, as slow as you were, you oughta be able to figure it out for yourself. Give ground. Take some punishment. Hold on when you’re hurt. The closer you get to the wedding, the harder it’s gonna be for Cohan to get between you and Kate. The thing is, Stanley, that I always figured you for a tough guy, but I only saw you in the ring. What you want here is a quick answer. It’s only natural. But that isn’t gonna happen. You gotta keep your guard up and go the distance.”

“All right, Sarge, I get the picture. Maybe I should’ve studied for the sergeant’s exam, instead of reaching out for the detectives. That’s what I was doing before
you
came along.”

Epstein looked at his watch. “I gotta get out of here, Stanley. It’s almost eight o’clock. You goin’ into the house?”

“Later. I’ll be in later. I’m supposed to meet with an ADA at nine-thirty.”

“Banker’s hours. I guess being a big-shot detective isn’t
all
bad.”

Moodrow ignored the comment. “There’s one other thing I wanted to ask you about, Sarge. You remember a guy named Luis Melenguez?”

“Can’t say that I do.”

“He got killed in a Pitt Street whorehouse the day after Christmas. A pimp.”

“Oh yeah, I remember him. I responded to the scene. What makes you say he was a pimp?”

“That’s what Pat Cohan told me. Melenguez was a friend of a friend. That kind of thing. I asked Patero about it, but it was Pat Cohan who told me it was a mob rubout.”

“Pat Cohan told you bullshit. Melenguez was blown apart with a forty-five. I admit that the crime scene was pretty messed up by the time I got there—you can imagine what happens when a beat cop walks into a building with twenty half-naked women—but, from what I could make of it, Melenguez was standing in a doorway when he bought it. At the time, I figured he walked into the middle of a robbery. You know what I’m talking about, right? It was your basic wrong place/wrong time situation. We questioned the whores and the pimp who ran the place, but, naturally, nobody saw anything. The suits got there before we were finished and I turned it over to them. Standard procedure.”

“Maybe that was the only chance the mob had to get him. Maybe they just saw an opportunity and took it.”

“I can’t buy that, Stanley. The guy was dressed poor.
Real
poor. He looked like he just came off the boat. Besides, nobody uses a forty-five to make a hit. Not if they know what they’re doing. A forty-five sounds like a cannon when it goes off. Plus, when you’re putting one behind the ear from six inches away, you don’t need that much power. No, if Melenguez was a pimp, then I’m the Pope.”

Moodrow sat back in his chair. “What I’m hearin’ is that somebody’s bullshitting me. And what I don’t understand is why they’re doin’ it.”

“Stanley, the job
runs
on bullshit. Get used to it. As for why? Well, you’re a detective, right? You wanna find out the truth, go detect.”

F
OR ANTONIO “STEPPY” ACCACIO
, this was the best time of the day. He was in the bathroom of his ten-room Montclair, New Jersey, home and his wife, Angela, was shaving his face. He would have preferred to have his own barber, his
personal
barber, do the shaving, but the ungrateful bastard simply refused to make the trip from Mulberry Street to Montclair despite everything he, Steppy Accacio, had done for the man.

But that was the way it was in life. You had to accept the bad with the good. Sure, you found some piece-of-shit swamp guinea and lent him the money to start his own business. Sure, you
expected
a little gratitude, something over and above the 20% interest you were charging. That didn’t mean you’d get it.

“Hey, no laugh. You laugh, I cut.”

Steppy opened his eyes to look at his wife. She was leaning over him, patiently scraping away at his heavy beard. As usual, his eyes dropped to her breasts. Angie was ten years younger than he was and her jugs were still firm. He wanted to touch her, to feel her dark nipples pushing against the palm of his hand. But the last time he’d tried that move, she’d sliced him so bad, he ended up with four stitches in his right earlobe.

“Almos’ finish,” Angela said.

“Looks like I survived again. Right, Angie?”

“No talk.”

She wiped his face with the hot towel she’d used to soak his beard, then slapped on the aftershave. Steppy inhaled the fragrance of Roma Brava. It was sweeter than Aqua-Velva. More in keeping with the old country, which was where it came from. Which was where his
wife
came from. Steppy had no particular love for Italy. He’d never been there and had no desire to go, but these little touches impressed the ‘mustache Petes’ who still clung to the reins of power. Who needed to be impressed as much as they needed the millions of dollars pouring into the pockets of their six-hundred-dollar suits.

Steppy got off the chair and shrugged into the silk dressing gown his wife held out to him.

“We’re havin’ company,” he announced. “Three, four guys. Make sure you got enough coffee and pastries.” He threw her a hard look. Like most Sicilian women, she had a sharp tongue. He’d been trying to break her of the habit, but had yet to come up with a method that didn’t require breaking her body as well.

“You tell me this lassa night. Why you gotta repeat? I’m no
stupido.
”

What you are, Steppy thought, is halfway to being a fuckin’ nigger. It was funny how her cousins’ descriptions had left that little fact out.
Olive
was how they’d described her complexion. Well, there were two kinds of olives, green and black, and Angela was a lot closer to the black kind. Not that she
really
looked like one of
them.
Not that she had a flat nose and big lips. Not that anyone would actually
say
anything about her complexion. But, still, the cousins
should
have told him.

He watched her butt twitch as she walked through their bedroom, then turned to admire his own complexion in the mirror. The simple fact that
his
parents were
not
from Sicily stared back at him. Blond hair, blue eyes, milky skin that burned in the sun. One thing for sure,
his
ancestors hailed from the highlands of Tuscany, not the mountains of Sicily, a fact which (at least according to the prevailing mythology) meant he couldn’t rise much beyond his present station.

“Let ’em keep their secret fuckin’ society,” Steppy muttered, patting his blond hair into place. “I know where I’m goin’, even if
they
don’t.”

He left the bathroom, crossing his bedroom and going downstairs to the den. The journey didn’t take very long. How could it? The small frame house wasn’t exactly a mansion in Upper Saddle River. On the other hand, it was a long way from the roach-infested tenements of lower Manhattan.

The deep chimes of the doorbell interrupted his reverie and he quickly took a seat in the leather chair behind his desk. He loved making his workers come all the way to New Jersey for business meetings. He loved it as much as they obviously hated it.

“Ya company’s here,” Angie yelled from the living room.

“Send ’em in,” Steppy called back, his face reddening with anger. The bitch was supposed to usher his guests into his presence, not scream like a vendor in the Fulton Fish Market.

“Steppy,” Joe Faci said, walking into the room, “sorry we’re late. The snow held us up. How are ya doin’ this morning?”

“That depends, Joe.” Steppy rose to offer his hand to Joe and his companion, Santo Silesi. “It depends on what you’re gonna tell me. Siddown.”

Before they could begin talking, Angie Accacio appeared, pushing an oak serving cart. A small pot of steaming coffee, a creamer and sugar bowl, three small cups and saucers, and a plate of small pastries were carefully arranged on its polished surface.

“Would yiz serve, Angie?” Steppy kept his voice even, despite the fact that it wasn’t a request. He waited patiently as she filled the cups and handed them, first to the guests and then to him. Until she walked out, closing the door behind her.

“All right, enough with the bullshit,” he snapped. “The Hebe’ll be here in a few minutes. Let’s get to it. How’d ya make out, Sandy?”

“What they did to Rocco? I didn’t see any of it. The Jew wouldn’t let me near it.”

“This I already know. Joe told me.”

“Then you also know that he’s got me standing around in project playgrounds with fifty bags of heroin.”

Steppy Accacio smiled indulgently. Santo Silesi was his oldest sister’s firstborn, a Tuscan on both sides. That was one thing the Sicilians had right. That bit about the family. It wasn’t a foolproof protection against treachery, but it was as close as you could get.

“Just be a little patient, Sandy,” Accacio said. “I’ll pull ya outta there as soon as possible. Meanwhile, ya should watch everything goin’ on with the Jew. Where he lives. Where he goes. Who he hangs out with. When the time comes, I wanna be able to find him.”

Silesi raised his hands, palm up. “Whatever it takes, right? That’s the only way to look at it. By the way, sales were better than we expected. I moved three hundred bags yesterday.”

“The take’s better,” Joe Faci interrupted, “but that might not be so good for us. The Hebe wants to buy in quantity. He claims he’s got the bucks to go for half an ounce. He’ll package himself.”

Accacio bit into a cannoli. The crust was flaky, the filling moist and sweet. “I don’t mind so much that the Hebe’s ambitious. I mean where’s he gonna go? He can’t do nothin’ without we say so first.
My
problem is that I had a bitch of time gettin’ hold of the territory we got. Which, you mighta noticed, ain’t all that big. What I figured on doin’ was maximizing the profit. If I sell to the Jew wholesale, I’m gonna have to expand and I ain’t too sure I can get permission. Not right away.”

“Why don’t we just shoot the mother-fucker,” Santo blurted out. “I mean every time I turn around the sheeny’s makin’ me eat shit.” He didn’t bother to add the simple fact that he was
afraid
of Jake Leibowitz.

“Yeah,” Steppy said, “I heard about that. What you gotta do, Sandy, is keep ya self-control. Like I said, I’m gonna pull you outta there soon. And when I do, I’m gonna make the Hebe report directly to you. I’m gonna put you in charge.”

“He ain’t gonna like
that
,” Joe Faci said.

“
That’s
the idea.”

All three were laughing when the doorbell sounded. They were still wiping the smirks off their faces when Angie led Jake Leibowitz into the room. “Jake,” Steppy Accacio said, rising to offer his hand, “we meet at last.”

Stanley Moodrow spent most of the day thinking about what he was going to do. Thinking about whether he should do
anything.
Greta was
already
pissed off, whereas Sal Patero had stopped being pissed off. Pushing his nose into Patero’s business wouldn’t necessarily make Greta happy, but it was guaranteed to make Sal unhappy. It would be the same as calling Patero (and Pat Cohan) a liar. Of course, there was always the chance that Patero
was
a liar. Moodrow wasn’t sure he wanted to know that, either.