Shoot the Moon (15 page)

The breeze is still coming off the river, occasionally blowing a fine mist against Goodman’s face. The forecast is for heavier rain tonight, so he hopes Russell isn’t too late. He likes walking in the rain, but standing around in it getting soaked suddenly doesn’t seem like much fun.

He watches a Circle Line sightseeing boat move downriver. It looks almost empty; whatever tourists are on board must be inside. Then he notices a couple on deck, a man and a woman huddled under a yellow poncho. They wave in his direction as the boat passes. Goodman looks behind him to see whom they might be waving at, but there’s no one there, so he turns back to them and returns their wave. He squints into the mist, trying to make out their faces, trying to tell if they’re lovers or friends, but in the darkness he’s unable to make out their features. He settles for lovers, oblivious to the weather, and he envies their shared intimacy.

It’s almost 7:30 by the time Russell arrives. “Sorry, man. Trains are all messed up,” he explains.

“No problem,” Goodman says, even though by this time he’s thoroughly drenched and beginning to shiver. “What’s the story?”

“The story is this,” Russell says, looking around with a nervousness Goodman hasn’t noticed until now. But the old lady has moved on to other trash cans, and the two fishermen are the only people in sight. “The deal goes down tonight.”

“Tonight?” Goodman asks. “It’s supposed to rain even harder.”

“Ezzackly,” Russell smiles. “Rainy Sataday night, my man says there won’t be a narc on the street.”

“What time?”

“Midnight.” Russell smiles again. “My man says that’s when the cops change shifts. They all be in the station house, doin’ their roll call an’ shit.”

It does seem to make sense to Goodman, who actually hasn’t given much thought to the police, other than the one uniformed cop who passed by last time. “Where do we meet?” he asks.

“Right back here,” Russell says. “You have the kilo, my man’ll have the twenny-five. It’s what we call cash and carry.”

“You’ll be here?” Goodman asks. Now that the deal is fast becoming a reality, he feels suddenly anxious.

“I dunno,” Russell says, looking around again. “It’s up to my man. But if I’m not, you’ll spot him. Great big guy. He’ll walk up to you, tell you I sent him.”

“What’s his name?”

“Better you don’t know his name, he don’t know yours.” Better for botha you.”

All this seems to be happening too fast for Goodman. “You sure this is going to work?” he asks.

“Hey, man,” Russell smiles. “This is what I
do.
You just be sure you remember my 5,000, okay?”

“Okay,” Goodman nods. “How do I find you to give you that?”

“We meet back here tomorrow, one in the aftanoon, okay?”

“Okay.” Goodman feels as if all he’s been doing is saying okay, like he’s strapped in on some amusement park ride that’s started moving, and now it’s too late to get off.

“They’re moving,” Daniel Riley tells Ray Abbruzzo, and they both begin to reel in their lines.

Goodman and Russell split up at York Avenue, Russell angling northwest to the subway, Goodman continuing home. He walks with his hat pulled down hard and the collar of his jacket turned up to protect him against the wind and rain at his back. He is totally oblivious to the dark-haired man and the redheaded man who follow him.

He makes one stop, at the corner of Second Avenue, for a newspaper, a package of instant soup, a loaf of bread, and a can of cat food. It’s almost dark by the time he enters his building.

“Home sweet home,” Abbruzzo says to Riley as they watch the door close behind the man who’s met with Russell.

“Now show us which apartment,” says Riley.

They stand in the rain across the street, fishing rods in their hands. A minute goes by, two minutes, three.

“Maybe this guy’s a fuckin’
mole,
” Abbruzzo says. “Lives in the fuckin’
dark.”

But finally a light goes on in the corner window of the top floor. A moment later, they can make out the silhouette of the man they’ve just followed, as he removes his jacket and shakes the rain off it.

“Bingo,” says Ray Abbruzzo.

“Let’s get outa here,” says Daniel Riley.

Cold and wet and tired, they do just that. But to their credit, they avoid the temptation to head for their homes this rainy evening; instead, they drive downtown to 80 Centre Street. Their aim is simple: to get a search warrant for the left-front apartment on the fifth floor of the building of the guy they’ve already nicknamed J. D. Mole.

But in their haste and their fatigue, in their cold and wet condition, they never pause to wonder just why it was that it took the guy a full six minutes to climb four flights of stairs.

It doesn’t take Michael Goodman six minutes to climb four flights of stairs, of course; it takes him only one. The first five minutes he spends in the basement, opening his storage locker, unzipping his black duffel bag, removing one of the blue plastic packages, and then replacing everything as it was before.

Russell Bradford is cold and wet, too, but he isn’t about to go home. From Ninety-Sixth Street, Russell heads directly for the Bronx, for 140th Street. Russell smells money, $20,000 of it.

When he gets into the block, he doesn’t see Big Red in his usual spot, but he does see Tito. Tito tells him Red’s been expecting him, is waiting for him in the McDonald’s on Walton Avenue. Russell walks the three blocks. It’s dark, and the streetlights are reflected on the wet pavement.

He enters the McDonald’s and looks around for Big Red. He spots him at a table in the back. To Russell’s surprise, Red’s not alone; he’s sitting with a guy Russell’s never seen before.

Big Red sees Russell and motions him over, points to an empty chair at the table. Russell sits down, eyes the half-eaten burgers and fries. He’s hungry, but he knows better than to say so.

Big Red is the first to speak. “Sup, Russell?” he says.

“Sup, Red?”

“This here’s Hammer,” says Big Red. Russell and Hammer nod to each other. Hammer seems to be almost as big as Big Red, though it’s hard to tell, since they’re sitting down. He’s not too dark, has a beard and mustache. There’s an ugly scar on his neck.

“How we doin’?” Big Red asks Russell.

“We doin’ good,” Russell tells him proudly. “The thing is set up for midnight, jus like you said.”

“By the river?”

“By the river.”

“Solid,” Big Red says. “Tell me what this dude looks like.”

“He’s Caucasian,” Russell says. “Short, kinda weak-lookin’. Got this hair looks like Brillo.”

“How old?”

“I dunno.” Russell’s not too good at ages. “Hard to tell with Caucasians. Thirty-five, maybe?”

Hammer speaks for the first time. “Does he pack?” he asks Russell.

“
Pack?”
Russell smiles. “This guy wooden know which end of a piece a bullet comes outa.”

“How do you know he ain’t the Man?” Hammer again.

“You see this guy,” Russell tells him, “you gonna laugh you ever axsed that question.”

“You betta be right, or you gonna be one sorry nigga.”

“You see for yourself.”

Hammer leans forward and gets into Russell’s face. “I ain’t about seein’ for myself,” he says. “That’s your job, and you fuckin’ well betta know what you talkin’ about.”

“Chill,” says Big Red in a soothing voice, causing Hammer to sit back. “Russell’s done good. It’s all gonna go down nice an’ easy.” He streches out “nice an’ easy.”

“You want me there for the introduction?” Russell asks.

“No,” Big Red says, “we’ll take it from here. We’ll hook up with you tomorrow.”

Russell knows he’s dismissed. He gets up and leaves, heads home. But this time tomorrow, he tells him himself, I’ll be one rich man.

Still, he could have used a burger, a couple of
fries,
at least.

Ray Abbruzzo and Daniel Riley sit in a large room with Assistant District Attorney Maggie Kennedy and begin drawing up the papers for a search warrant. Abbruzzo does most of the talking. Kennedy takes notes while she listens.

“We got this anonymous call from a citizen,” he tells her, “that this guy’s been dealing pure heroin out of his apartment. Gives us the exact location. So we begin a surveillance of him. Sure enough, pretty soon we seen him meet with three or four customers.”

“Were you able to observe any sales?” she asks.

“Yeah, yeah,” Abbruzzo says. “Coupla sales.”

“Did you arrest any of the buyers?”

“Uh, no.”

“Why not?”

“We didn’t wanna blow the thing,” Abbruzzo explains. “This guy’s very cautious.”

“
Very
cautious,” Riley echoes.

“We think he may be Italian,” Abbruzzo tells her. “Like
connected
Italian, you know what I mean?”

“What makes you believe that he keeps the heroin in his apartment?” she asks.

“The anonymous caller told us.”

“That was a while ago,” she notes. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Abbruzzo says. “We see him leave his place with packages, meet his customers, and do the transactions. He always comes back empty-handed. Gotta be the apartment.”

“Gotta be,” Riley agrees.

“Do you know his name?” Kennedy asks.

“Like I said, the guy’s very secretive,” Abbruzzo tells her. “But we’ve got his
street
name.” Here he looks around, as though he’s fearful someone might overhear him. Then he leans forward and, lowering his voice to a whisper, confides in her. “They call him ‘the Mole.’“

“The
Mole?”

“Shhhhhh,” Abbruzzo cautions her. “This is
big.”

“The guy rarely sees daylight,” Riley explains.

Kennedy sits back and looks over her notes. “Well,” she says finally, “it’s a little on the thin side. But I guess we’ve got enough probable cause to take a shot at it.”

By ten o’clock, Goodman’s pacing about his apartment. But because his apartment is so tiny, pacing involves a lot of turns and a fair amount of skill, and more than once he manages to bump a shin on his coffee table or clip an elbow navigating the bathroom door.

He knows this is his very last chance to back out of the deal. And he also knows how absurdly simple it would be to do just that. All he has to do is not show up. With no other way of finding Russell, that’ll be the end of it; his career as a drug dealer will be over before it’s ever begun.

But by now, he knows he
is
going to show up. He doesn’t know if it’s just for Kelly, either. He has a vague awareness that he’s also doing this to fulfill some peculiar need of
his.

The thought catches him somewhat by surprise. Saving his daughter is one thing. Even yielding to a golden opportunity is forgivable. But what is this part of him that suddenly has his heart pumping in anticipation of an act that, by all rights, should fill him with nothing but dread and self-loathing? Is this Michael Goodman’s great adventure, that life-altering experience that always seems to happen to the other guy? Is this his walk on the wild side?

He pictures himself in a movie scene, the hero (yes, the hero - not once does he stop to consider the possibility that he’s really the villain) about to go out and face his defining moment of truth.

He goes into his bathroom, faces the mirror of the medicine cabinet. A short, slightly balding, wiry-haired, bespectacled middle-aged accountant stares back at him. His heart slows down a bit, the spell broken.

For now, at least.

At three minutes past eleven, Detective Raymond Abbruzzo stands in part AR-3 of Manhattan Criminal Court, more commonly referred to as Night Court, and raises his right hand.

“Detective,” says Acting Supreme Court Justice Carol Berkman, “do you swear to the truth of the contents of this affidavit?”

Abbruzzo looks the judge straight in the eye. “Yes, I do,” he says.

She signs the warrant, complete with a “no-knock” provision authorizing the officers to enter the premises without first announcing their purpose and authority.

Outside the courtroom, the warrant in his hand, Abbruzzo turns to his partner. “Now, or first thing Monday?”

Riley seems to think carefully for a moment. Then he says, “I’m not sure, but I think I got a dentist appointment Monday morning. My gums-”

“Okay, okay,” Abbruzzo says. “Let’s go for it. We can call for some backup on the way uptown.”

Riley checks his watch, realizes they’ve been on overtime for three hours already. “Good news for the old paycheck,” he says.

“Bad news for the Mole,” says Abbruzzo.

The rain has turned back to sleet and is falling more heavily as Goodman makes his way back to the river for what will be the last of these strange trips he’s been making for what seems like weeks. Still without an umbrella, he leans into the weather, his hands balled into fists inside the pockets of his jacket. As he walks, he can feel the package, stuffed down into the front of his undershorts like he’d seen Russell do it, safe there from the rain.

He knows he’s early, but doesn’t bother checking the time. To do so would require him to extract his hand and expose his watch to the elements. Never mind, he thinks. He’ll wait however long he must; for $20,000, he can afford to get wet.

There’s no one in sight as he reaches the river’s edge. Russell - or Russell’s “man” - was right: No police officers are going to be strolling by at midnight on Saturday in the pouring rain. At the same time, however, Goodman’s struck by how dark and cold it is, and by how very alone he feels.

What light there is comes from streetlamps behind him, and the movements of branches in the wind cause shadows to dance darkly and wildly. He grasps the icy railing in front of him, imagines he’s the captain of a boat, sailing through a stormy sea on a moonless night. He peers out across the waves and studies the lights on the far shore. Somehow, he has to navigate this crossing, has to bring his troubled craft safely into port. He blinks the rainwater out of his eyes, tries to get a fix on the brightest light he sees, the beacon he’ll aim for.

“Good evening.” The voice startles him, and he whirls around to see a very large black man standing there. “You gonna catch cold standin’ out in the rain like this.”