Piece of the Action (9 page)

“I thought the
girl
was supposed to do the striptease,” he said.

Kathleen giggled. “Take it off. Take it off.”

“All right, I will.”

Moodrow sat on the edge of the bed and slowly drew the covers back. Kathleen, surprised, started to cover her breasts with her hands, then fell back on the pillows. Her breath was shallow, her eyes half-closed. Moodrow laid the fingers of his right hand on her throat, then slid them gently down her throat, over her breasts and along her smooth, flat belly. When his fingers crossed the dark triangle of hair and dropped into the moist flesh below, she moaned softly and her legs came apart.

“Be gentle, Stanley,” she whispered. “Don’t hurt me.”

But he knew he
was
going to hurt her. Of all the dirty tricks nature had laid on human beings, this was the dirtiest. There was no painless way, short of surgery, for a woman to lose her virginity. But that didn’t mean there couldn’t be pleasure, too. Moodrow had been thinking about it for a long time and he’d already decided what he was going to do. If she let him. If she didn’t withdraw from what she had to see as a perversion.

He let his lips and tongue follow the line his finger had traced, though he took much longer, playing with her nipples and her belly and the soft hollow spot on the inside of her thigh. Her milky white skin reddened until it seemed like her whole body was blushing, but the deep, almost guttural sound coming from her throat indicated something other than embarrassment. At some point, she began to call his name. Repeating it until the single word became lost in a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a scream.

Moodrow sat up on the bed and yanked off his bathrobe and his underwear. Kathleen, he knew, was as ready as a virgin, male or female,
could
be. Her eyes were joyous (if somewhat glazed) and her body was completely open to him. It was the perfect moment to enfold her in his arms, to gently lift her legs …

And that’s exactly what he would have done. If he hadn’t put the Trojan on backwards. If he hadn’t ripped it and had to fumble in the nightstand for another one. By the time he managed to open the foil and get it on, the glaze in Kathleen’s eyes had disappeared.

“I’ve never seen one of those before,” she said.

“That makes
two
things you’ve never seen before.”

She ignored the humor, reaching out to take his erection in her hand. He would have expected her to be reluctant, but she seemed more curious than naive. She drew him into her, opening for him, accepting his thrusts until he began to call her name, until he was lost in his own fire.

By the time Moodrow finally rolled over to one side of the narrow bed, they were both covered with sweat. He knew that he should take her in his arms, that she needed to be reassured, but somewhere along the line he must have smacked his nose, because it hurt like hell.

“Are you all right, Stanley?”

“My nose,” he answered. “I think I broke my nose again.”

He opened his eyes to find her propped up on one arm. Her breasts were inches from his face. Suddenly, the realization that he would marry this woman, that he’d spend his life with her, rushed over him. What he felt was grateful.

“I love you, Kathleen,” he said, ignoring his nose.

“I love you too, Stanley.” She leaned down to kiss him gently on the lips. “We’re going to have a good life together. A great life.”

T
HE SERGEANT AT THE
duty desk, Stefan Kirsch, grinned from ear to ear when Stanley Moodrow walked into the 7th Precinct.

“Jesus, Stanley,” he said, “I thought you
won
the fight.”

“That’s just a rumor, Sarge. The
real
truth is that only the doctor won.”

Moodrow felt awkward coming into the stationhouse in a suit and tie. He’d been proud enough when he’d examined himself in the privacy of his bedroom, but now he felt almost naked. He felt like a
civilian.

“Well, congratulations, anyway. You deserve it.”

“Thanks, Sarge.”

There were several other uniforms in the outer lobby, all cops Moodrow had been working with for the past five years. They, too, greeted him like the celebrity he was supposed to be. One, James Curley, walked over and ran his fingers along Moodrow’s lapel.

“Where’d ya get the rag, Stanley? Robert Hall?”

“Robert Hall? If you wanna say I’m cheap, why not try S. Klein’s?”

“Alright, S. Klein’s.”

“Jimmy, the suit’s
custom-made.
” Moodrow wasn’t lying, even if he’d left out the part about going down to Robert Hall and not finding a suit big enough to fit him. He didn’t mention the part about the tailor, Larry Chin, working out of his apartment on Division Street, either. Or the one about the bolt of cloth being a factory second from a mill in South Carolina.

“I’m only kiddin’ ya, Stanley.” He took Moodrow’s hand and shook it. “Congratulations on the Gold Shield. Lookin’ at your face, I’d have to say you deserve it.”

“That seems to be the general opinion.”

The needling was just what Moodrow expected. After all, he (in
their
minds, at least) had been fighting for every cop in the Department and for the cops in the 7th in particular. That was why they’d come to watch two men beat the crap out of each other. Because they somehow shared in the victory.

“I’ll see you later, Jimmy. I gotta report upstairs.”

For Stanley Moodrow, walking up those stairs was a far greater reward than having the referee lift his arm. Uniformed cops almost never left the first floor of the 7th Precinct. The second story contained the captain’s and the lieutenants’ offices, as well as the detectives’ squad room. Going up there was like being given a day pass to Mount Olympus.

Now, he’d be walking up these stairs every day. The squad room would be a second home, the other detectives a second family. Which is why he was hoping for a big hello from those detectives who happened to be at their desks. What he got, on the other hand, was ignored.

The 7th Precinct squad room (like every other detectives’ squad room in New York City) was nothing more than a large room crowded with wooden desks.
Ancient
wooden desks. Desks blackened with decades of grime and covered with unfinished paperwork. The telephones were so old, the numbers had worn off the dials.

Moodrow picked his way between the desks. He knew a few of the detectives from one or another of his fights, but even the familiar faces kept their backs turned to him. Of course, there was always the possibility that this was the way they treated
all
newly appointed detectives, third grade. Maybe their studied indifference was a kind of initiation rite, like fraternity hazing.

Not that he had much time to think about it. He had to report to Detective Lieutenant Salvatore Patero, the precinct whip, for assignment to one or another of the many detectives’ squads and Patero’s office was just on the other side of the room. As he knocked on the door, Moodrow wondered just where he’d be assigned. He was hoping for homicide, but it was more likely he’d begin at the beginning, with vice or burglary.

“Come on in.”

Patero’s face was buried in the
Herald-Tribune
when Moodrow entered the small office. He took his time before looking up, but when he saw Moodrow, he managed a smile.

“Welcome to the detectives, Stanley.”

“Thanks, Lou. Glad to be here.”

“Siddown a minute. And don’t call me ‘Lou’ or ‘Lieutenant.’ Sal’ll be fine.” Patero waited for Moodrow to seat himself before continuing. “You’re gonna be working with me, Stanley. You’re gonna be my personal assistant. At least temporarily.”

Moodrow waited for Patero to say something else, to at least explain the nuts and bolts of personal assistantship, but Patero wasn’t talking. He lit a cigarette, a Kent, and leaned back in his chair.

“Uh, Sarge,” Moodrow finally said, “the thing is that I’m not sure that I’m qualified to be your assistant. I don’t know anything about the paperwork or the procedure. I …”

“Can you drive a car?”

“Yeah. Of course. How can you be a cop if you can’t drive?”

“For now, that’s all you gotta know.” Patero pushed back his chair and grinned. “What’s the matter, Stanley? You don’t look happy.”

What Moodrow
felt
was cheated. He wasn’t sure who’d done the cheating, but he knew that he hadn’t fought his way to a Gold Shield in order to become Sal Patero’s chauffeur. Or his secretary, either. Moodrow felt the anger begin to rise, but when he spoke, his voice was calm.

“I was hoping to, you know, just start in the regular way.”

Patero leaned over the desk. “In that case, maybe you should’ve become a
detective
in the regular way. But you didn’t, Stanley. You got here because you met the right people, not because of what you did on the street. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not puttin’ you down. In the job, politics is what it’s all about. Everybody knows that. But when your rabbi’s an
inspector
and when you’re engaged to your rabbi’s
daughter,
there’s no more regular to your career. You’re gonna ride with
me
and neither of us has any say in the matter. If you got a problem with that, go to your future father-in-law.
Capish
?”

“I understand.”

“I wanna get along with you, Stanley. Because, personally, I think you’re a good guy. I doubt very much that Pat Cohan bothered to look at your service folder, but I went through every inch of it. I
liked
what I saw. And I’m also glad to hear that you want to go into one of the squads. Eventually, if I can swing it, you will. But right now your job is to learn how things work and my job is to teach you. Take the keys to my car and go make sure it isn’t blocked in. You won’t have a problem finding it. Being as I’m a big shot in the Seventh, I get a white Chevy instead of a black Chevy.”

Patero’s white ’57 Chevrolet, though unmarked, was far from unrecognizable. Moodrow, sitting behind the wheel with the engine running, recalled a time when he’d been working traffic on the corner of Houston and Clinton. The kids were coming out of school and his job was to get them safely across

Houston Street’s eight lanes of cars, trucks and buses. Patero had come cruising up Clinton in his white Chevy. A bunch of kids,
grammar
school kids, were following behind, yelling, “Here comes the lieutenant. Here comes the lieutenant.”

Maybe, Moodrow figured, if he spent enough time with Patero, the kids would call out, “Here comes the lieutenant’s
dog.
”

Patero strolled out ten minutes later, still carrying the
Herald-Tribune.
He got in the car, instructed Moodrow to drive over to Madison and Montgomery Streets, then buried his face in the newspaper. Moodrow, not knowing what else to do, pulled the car away from the curb and began to work his way along the narrow Lower East Side streets. They were stopped at a light when Patero spoke up.

“Stanley,” he said, “ya wanna hear somethin’ funny?”

“Anything.”

“Awright, you remember a kid named Bobby Gaydos?”

“The kid who killed his mother?”

“Right. Cut her throat with a Boy Scout knife last Thursday. Well, yesterday, four detectives take him over to the funeral home where she’s laid out and he breaks down and cries for two hours. Boo-hoo-hoo. Whatta ya wanna bet some commie judge sends him to a nut house for treatment? Instead of the electric chair, where he belongs. I mean the kid made a goddamned
confession.
”

“
Two
goddamned confessions.” The truth, and Moodrow knew it, was that the kid had withdrawn his confessions and his grandmother was providing him with an alibi for the time of the murder. Moodrow also knew that interrogating officers routinely extracted confessions the way dentists extracted teeth. But he didn’t say any of what he was thinking. Partly because his own thoughts ran counter to an official NYPD myth that blamed all crime on bleeding-heart judges and partly because
he
was a detective, third grade, and Sal Patero was a detective lieutenant. The difference between Patero’s rank and his own was like the difference between champagne and vinegar.

When they arrived at the intersection of Madison and Montgomery, Patero ordered Moodrow to make a right and park.

“We’re goin’ in there,” he announced, pointing to a candy store halfway up the block. “When we get inside, I don’t want you to say a word. Not a
fucking
word,
capish
?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You’re here to learn. You don’t have no
opinions
in this matter. But, maybe you could still help me out with somethin’. The guy I’m gonna be talkin’ to—his name is Joey Fish—is givin’ me trouble. I want you to stand there and stare at him. Don’t say nothin’, right? Just keep your eyes in his face. The way your mug looks, you could scare a gorilla.”

Without waiting for an answer, Patero stepped out of the car and began to walk up the block. Moodrow, scrambling to follow, banged his ribs against the steering wheel (cars didn’t fit him any better than off-the-rack suits) and let out an involuntary yelp.

“What’d ya say?” Patero stopped and turned to face his assistant.

“I hit my ribs. They’re still pretty sore from the fight.”

Patero’s smile was friendly and open. “Jesus, Stanley, what you did to that fireman …” He shook his head. “Don’t worry. You ain’t gonna have to fight anyone today. The kind of problem we got with this jerk, we don’t handle with our fists. You’re kinda like a … What’s the word?
Reinforcement.
That’s right. You’re a visual aid.”

The candy store in question was as nondescript as any of the hundreds of others dotting the Lower East Side. Newspapers lay on a shelf near the cash register. A long counter, covered with formica and lined with revolving stools, ran all the way to the back wall. Racks of magazines, school supplies and greeting cards paralleled the counter. Moodrow had spent a good part of his childhood in stores exactly like this, graduating from penny candies to chocolate egg creams to banana splits as he moved through grammar school and junior high.