Shoot the Moon (24 page)

Tuesday morning, Goodman makes Kelly bundle up, and they walk to Central Park. They enter at Ninetieth Street and circle the reservoir. It looks full from all the rain they’ve had lately. There’s ice at the very edges.

“Do people really drink this water?” Kelly asks him.

“I think so,” he says, though he’s not really sure. He remembers hearing that the city gets its water from upstate somewhere.

“It looks so yucky,” she says. “All those leaves and allergy.”

“Algae.”

“I like to call it allergy,” she says. “How come Carmen couldn’t come with us?”

“She’s got something she has to do.”

The thing Carmen has to do is to call her brother. Last night, after Goodman had broken his promise to himself and asked her about him, she’d naturally wanted to know why. So he’d started at the beginning: He’d told her about his discovery of the blue plastic bags in the spare tire down in Fort Lauderdale. He’d described his efforts to turn the drugs in, his decision to bring them to New York, his encounter with Russell, and the disaster in Carl Schurz Park. He’d also included the burglary of his apartment, and the search of it by the police later on. But he’d stopped short of telling her precisely how much heroin there is or just where he’d hidden it, and she hadn’t pressed him for details there. He was grateful for that - he figured the less she knew about those things, the better for her.

Yes, she’d said, her brother Vincent - Vinnie to everybody but her - had boasted to her more than once that he’d been involved in big drug deals involving both cocaine and heroin. She had no idea if he was being truthful or not, but she’d learned over time not to put anything past him.

“But Michael,” she’d said, “do you have any idea how dangerous this is? Do you know what could happen to us if we get caught?”

“Not
we,
paleface,” he’d said. “I just want you to introduce me to your brother. Then I’ll take care of the rest. I want you to stay completely out of it.”

“Right. You’ll take care of it like you did when they left you in your undershorts.”

“I’ll be more careful,” he’d told her. “And if I screw up again, so be it. That way, if I go down, I go down alone. I don’t have to destroy your life, too.”

She’d looked at him hard at that point and said, “You
saved
my life, Michael. If this is what you decide you’re going to do, I want to help you.”

“No,” he’d said. “Besides, all I did was bring you in out of the rain.”

“No,” she’d insisted, before repeating her words slowly and emphatically. “You saved my life.”

They’d gone to bed shortly after, she on the bed with Kelly and Larus and Pop-Tart, he on the floor, fortified by her promise to call her brother in the morning. But, explaining that she was now more concerned than ever that his phone might be tapped, she’d told him that she’d do it from a payphone. Just to be on the safe side.

“Are there fish in reservoirs?” Kelly asks him now.

“I suppose so,” he says.

“How come they don’t freeze?”

“They’re New York City fish,” he explains. “They’re tough.”

“How come they don’t get sucked into the pipes that take the water to our faucets?”

“They’re too big.”

“How about baby ones?”

“I imagine there are screens to keep them out,” he says.

“How about their poops? Can’t
they
get through the screens?”

“Maybe,” he has to admit. “But then they treat the water with chlorine and stuff before it goes into our faucets.”

“It still sounds yucky to me,” she says.

That evening, after Kelly’s asleep, Carmen informs Goodman that she’s succeeded in reaching her brother. As he waits for whatever she’s going to tell him next, Goodman finds himself half-hoping that it’ll be that Vinnie’s interested in the idea, and half-hoping to hear that he wants nothing whatsoever to do with it.

In fact, the news turns out to be a combination of the two.

“He’s interested all right,” she says, “but he’s afraid to meet you. Thinks you might be a narc. Are you a narc, Michael?”

“I think I can safely say that I am not a narc,” he says.

“I actually took the liberty of telling him that. But you’ve got to understand Vincent’s pretty paranoid. When he heard what I was talking about, he made me give him the number of the pay phone I was at, so that
he
could go to a pay phone and call me back at
my
pay phone. I swear, I felt like I was in the CIA or something. Next he started asking me if I was angry at him for anything. He finally admitted he’s afraid
I
might be trying to set him up.”

“So-”

“So, after all that, he said he wants in, but only if he can send someone else to deal with you.”

Goodman digests the news for a moment. “So what do you think?” he asks her.

“I don’t know, Michael. You asked me to call him; I called him. He said he’s interested. It’s up to you now.”

“Who’s this guy he wants to send me?”

“They call him T.M.,” she says. “I met him once or twice years ago. He went to school with Vincent, taught him how to steal cars.”

“Hey,” Goodman says. “What are friends for, anyway?”

She laughs, but it’s not one of her best. It’s clear to him that she has reservations about this business. He wishes he had a choice, wishes he could come up with some other way to raise the money.

“So,” he says. “Let’s say I want to get together with Vincent’s guy, T-”

“T.M.”

“T.M. How do I arrange that?”

“Vincent’s pay phone is going to call my pay phone at exactly noon tomorrow,” she says. “If you want to do it, you go there with me. If not, you pass. Only, one thing?”

“What’s that?”

“Call him Vinnie, okay? Anybody but me calls him Vincent, he’s liable to freak out. Somebody once told him it’s a fag name.”

“Fair enough,” Goodman says. “Vinnie it is.”

Abbruzzo and Riley are off duty that evening, and the plant is being manned by the two OCCB detectives, Weems and Sheridan. They’ve been on for almost seven hours, with hardly a single phone call to log in.

“I’m telling you, it’s too quiet in there,” Sheridan says. “Something’s going down.”

“Nah, they’re probably in the sack, playing Hide the Salami.”

“That little fucker?” Sheridan laughs. “He don’t look like he can even get it up.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Weems says. “Those little guys can surprise you sometimes.”

But at that moment, the only person Michael Goodman is surprising is himself. He lies on his now-familiar spot on the floor, wondering how it is that he’s so quickly yielded to temptation all over again, barely a week after getting so badly burned the first time.

For already he knows that he’ll be with Carmen when she goes to the pay phone at noon tomorrow. He doesn’t even allow himself the luxury of pretending that he may yet decide to pass. No, he’ll go, and he’ll take his chances again, even if that means taking his lumps again.

His hope, as he lies there in the dark of his apartment, staring up at the ceiling, is that this time he’ll manage to be just a little bit smarter about it.

It’s already ten minutes past noon on Wednesday when Goodman turns to Carmen and asks, “This guy T.M., he’s not black by any chance, is he?”

They’ve been waiting in the cold at a pay phone at the corner of Eighty-sixth and Third - the same phone from which Carmen called her brother Vincent (“Vinnie to you”) yesterday. Kelly is with them, working on a pretzel they bought from a chestnut seller. The chestnuts looked yucky, she said.

“Pay phones don’t call
you
,” she now tries to explain patiently to the two adults. “They’re there for you to call someone
else.”

While Carmen suppresses a laugh, Goodman does his best to justify what they’re doing here. “The someone else knows this number, and he wanted to call us right around this time, when we knew we’d be here.”

“What about?”

“About work,” Goodman says. “A new job, maybe.”

“Sounds weird to me,” Kelly says.

“Can I have a bite?” Goodman asks. He’s reaching for the pretzel when they’re all startled by a loud ringing noise.

“There,” he says. “You see?”

Carmen picks up the receiver and speaks into it. After a minute, she hands it to Goodman, mouthing the initials T.M. Goodman pulls a scrap of paper and a pen out of his pocket. He waits until Carmen’s walked Kelly out of earshot before he says “Hello” into the phone.

“Hello,” says a raspy voice. “You her friend?”

“Yes.”

“I hear you got sompin speshul.”

“That’s right,” Goodman says.

“My people are interested in checkin’ it out,” the voice says. “Whaddaya need for a quadda oh-zee?”

Goodman doesn’t know what to say. He has no idea what T.M. has just asked him. He scribbles down what it sounded like, but he’s afraid to try to answer whatever the question was.

“Too large be okay?” the voice asks.

Goodman is stumped again, but he figures he’s got to say something. “Sure,” he says, “that’ll be okay.”

“You know the big bookstore over on Lexington?” the voice wants to know. “The Barney Noble?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll meet there same time tomorrow - in the travel book section. You be carrying some flowers wrapped up in white paper. Put the thing inside the paper. But make sure it don’t get wet. That’s very important.

Okay?”

“Okay,” Goodman says. “How will I recognize you?”

“You won’t,” the voice says. “I’ll recanize
you.
Remember, I’m the one’s stickin’ my neck out here.”

“What do I call the girl in my report?” Riley asks Abbruzzo as they sit shivering in the wiretap plant, trying their best to keep warm from the space heater. The phone they’re listening in on has been quiet all morning. Riley is bent over a three-page document, about halfway through filling in blanks. Fortunately, most police reports tend to be multiple choice in format, or, at worst, short-answer. Essays are rarely called for.

“I don’t know,” Abbruzzo says. “We don’t have her name yet.”

“No,” Riley says. “I don’t mean her
name.
I mean like ‘girlfriend’ or ‘companion’ - that kinda thing.”

“I think ‘companion’ is when they’re gay,” Abbruzzo says. “How about ‘lady friend’?”

“Too English.”

“‘Lover’?”

“Too romantic,” Riley says. “We’re supposed to be making this guy sound like a major drug violator, remember? Not a fucking movie star.”

“I’ve got it,” Abbruzzo says. “She’s his
paramour.”

“Ooooh, that’s good - pure Mafia.” It’s a few seconds before he looks up from his writing. “P-A-R-A?”

“M-O-R-E,” Abbruzzo says.

“Right,” says Riley.

That evening, after Kelly’s fallen asleep, Goodman fishes out the scrap of paper from his pocket and flattens it out on the table for Carmen to help him decipher. They stare at the writing on it.

“What was he talking about when he said these things?” Carmen asks.

“The Barnes & Noble part I understood,” Goodman says. “That’s where we’re supposed to meet tomorrow. I guess at quarter after twelve. I’m supposed to be in the travel section, with the stuff in a bunch of flowers. It’s the first part I’m confused about. I think he was telling me how much I’m supposed to bring.”

“And that’s when he said, ‘Quadda-’“

“‘Quadda ohzee.’“

“Sounds like a Quarter Pounder with cheese,” Carmen says.

“That’s it!”

“What’s it?”

“‘Quaddah’ is
quarter,
” he announces with all the pride of a spy who’s just cracked the enemy’s master code, “and ‘ohzee’ is
oz.,
as in
ounce.”

“They want a quarter of an ounce,” Carmen agrees. “Like a sample. Did you discuss price?”

“I think so,” Goodman says. “I think that’s where the ‘too large’ came in.”

“That’s the price,” she says.

“What’s the price?”

“Two large.”

“What’s too large?” Goodman asks, beginning to feel like he’s caught up in an Abbott and Costello routine.

“Two large means $2,000,” she explains. “Paulie was all the time talking like that. ‘Two C’s’ or ‘two yards’ would mean 200. ‘Two G’s’ or ‘two big ones’ or ‘two large’ is 2,000. You know - God forbid he should’ve spoken English.”

But Goodman’s no longer paying attention. His accountant’s brain has taken over once again. If a quarter of an ounce goes for $2,000, then an ounce is worth $8,000. Multiply that by sixteen, and a pound will bring close to $130,000. A kilo, or 2.2 pounds, should be $286,000. And twenty kilos brings you slightly over $5.7 million.

“These guys pay a lot more than the black guys,” he says softly.

“As I remember the story, the black guys weren’t into paying anything. Weren’t they the ones who took your pants?”

“Yup,” Goodman says. “What do you think these guys’ll try to take?”

“Oh, not much. Your liver, your heart.”

“Nothing important.”

“That’s why you’re going to let me help you,” Carmen says, putting her hand on his.

“Right,” he laughs.” ‘Cause you’re so good about holding on to
your
pants.”

She pulls her hand away as though from an open flame. “That was cruel,” she tells him.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean it that way.” And when he reaches for her hand, she reluctantly lets him take it back. But in that brief exchange, Michael Goodman knows this: There’s a tiny part of him that
did
mean to hurt her just now, a part of him that blames her, that’s angry at her for having given in to Paulie, for having surrendered - what, her body, her love? Not quite trusting himself to put these feelings into words just yet, he says nothing. Instead, he gives her hand a gentle squeeze.

Hours later, Goodman lies on the floor and listens in the dark to the sounds that come from the sofa bed. After awhile, he’s able to recognize the tiny exhalations of his daughter. Ever since she first came home from the hospital as a newborn, she’s been a mouth-breather. He remembers how, in the first days and weeks of her life, he would stand beside her crib and listen to the rhythm of her breathing, marveling at this tiny creature with a life of her own. In later months, he would find himself in the doorway to her room, checking to make sure she was safe, hearing again the little puffs of air coming from her lips. Now he hears them again, identifies them as hers as surely as a mother seal can pick out her own pup by its smell from thousands on the beach.

Next, he hears the occasional purr of Pop-Tart, a miniature motor idling so gently that he knows he’d miss it altogether if he didn’t know to listen for it.

Finally, he makes out the sound he’s been searching for: yet a third noise, this one so soft that he’s dependent not on its volume but upon its frequency. Twenty years ago, Michael Goodman was an ensign in the navy on a training ship hugging the coast from New London, Connecticut, to Norfolk, Virginia. Too sick to sleep one night, he’d come up on deck and clung to the rail, afraid he might die, and afraid he might not. He remembers now picking out the beacon of a distant lighthouse not by its brightness - there were hundreds of stars and other lights on shore that were brighter - but by the constant, regular intervals that punctuated its flashes.

He does his best now to filter out the sounds of his daughter’s exhalations and the purring of the kitten, so that he can isolate this third sound and concentrate on it. He times the intervals at six seconds, thinks how that might appear on a nautical chart as “BS 6sec” - breathing sound, every six seconds. Only when he’s completely certain that the rhythm is too regular to mean anything but deep sleep does he rise as quietly as he possibly can, tiptoe in his socks to the door, and slip out silently, wedging a sock in the door frame to avoid making a clicking noise.

Down in the basement, he aims his flashlight and works the combination of his lock. He unzips the black duffel bag and retrieves the same blue plastic package as before. Carefully, he taps some of its powder into a small baggie, stopping when he guesses he has a quarter of an ounce. Then he replaces things as they were, makes his way back upstairs, and returns to his spot on the floor. When his own heartbeat finally quiets, he’s able to pick out his daughter’s tiny exhalations, the kitten’s occasional purring, and the six-second breathing sounds that he knows can only belong to Carmen.

At the plant, Abbruzzo and Riley share a pizza and a six-pack of warm Pepsi. They’re working twelve-hour rotations now, beginning with the graveyard shift, midnight to 0800. They’ll be on until noon Thursday.

“Looks like Mr. and Mrs. Excitement are down for the night,” Abbruzzo says.

“No question about it,” Riley agrees. He enters a notation on the log sheet: