A Piece of the Action

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.

In the course of his candy store education, he’d also come to learn that many of these neighborhood establishments had back rooms that catered to the needs of adults. As he watched Patero cross the room without acknowledging the elderly man behind the counter, he had a pretty good idea of where they were going and what they were going to do. He was glad that he wasn’t inside one of his old haunts, that he didn’t, for instance, know either of the two customers sitting at the counter.

But Moodrow did know Joey Fish. Or, at least, he knew Joey Fish’s kid, Alan, from high school.

“Jeez,” Joey Fish said as Moodrow ducked through the doorway, “what happened to him?”