A Piece of the Action

Moodrow responded with the blank stare requested by Sal Patero.

“I remember you.” Fish shook his finger at Moodrow. “You’re that kid who used to fight in the Gloves. The big one who went to school with Alan. Whatta ya, still fightin’?”

Moodrow continued to stare and Joey’s face underwent a transformation as he put Moodrow’s hostility together with his reputation. Joey Fish turned as white as the chalked odds scrawled on the blackboards covering the walls.

“Hey, Lieutenant,” Fish said, turning to Patero, “whatta ya doin’ here? You puttin’ the muscle on me?”

“Cut the crap, Fish. You got what you owe me?”

“Lieutenant …”

“Just tell me. Yes or no. Without the bullshit.”

Fish opened the desk drawer and withdrew an envelope. He passed it to Patero who weighed it in his palm.

“It’s all here, right? Current and past due?”

“Every penny. And ya didn’t need to bring in a palooka ta get it. I told ya I had a problem. Some of the boys was past-postin’ at Hialeah and I got my balls caught in the squeeze. All I asked was a few weeks to recover.”

“Don’t bother me with ya problems, Fish. You got a business to run. Did ya call the phone company and tell ’em, ‘I can’t pay my bill because some hustlers past-posted in Florida’? What you shoulda done was collect from the bums that cheated you. Not hold out on me.”

Fish glanced at Moodrow, then shrugged. “Some guys you gotta pay. Even if they’re cheatin’ ya. Even if ya know ya bein’ cheated. Some guys ya gotta pay.”

“Very sharp, Joey.” Patero was already heading for the door. “Some guys ya do gotta pay. And I’m one of ’em.”

They continued to make the rounds for the rest of the morning, neither of them speaking very much. Moodrow spent the time reflecting on the felonies he was committing, one after another. For Patero, on the other hand, the business they conducted was routine, a time-honored ritual that predated the existence of the modern NYPD by fifty years. Gambling and prostitution were tolerated in certain neighborhoods because the voters wanted gambling and prostitution. No matter how often or how loudly Cardinal Spellman condemned the sins of the flesh. Of course, the citizens weren’t especially fond of the violence that flowed naturally from the existence of an institutionalized underworld. But wasn’t that where the cops came in?

The unspoken policy was control and containment. And how could you complain if the cops in charge of implementing this policy, in return for breaking the oath they’d taken to support the Constitution of the United States and enforce the laws of New York State, felt they needed a bit of extra compensation?

“Stanley, you ready for lunch?”

“Whatever you want, Sal.” It was the only thing he could say, under the circumstances. Besides, his stomach was rumbling like a Con Ed steampipe about to explode.

“See if ya could work your way over to Grand and Mott. The Castellemare Cafe.”

Moodrow took a left on Delancey and began to fight his way through the traffic. Delancey Street was the connecting link between the Williamsburg Bridge on the east side and the Holland Tunnel. Jersey-bound trucks, loaded with Brooklyn freight and headed for points west, packed Delancey Street from early morning until after dark.

“Light up the bubble, Stanley. I’m in a hurry.”

Moodrow put the red light on top of the Chevy and flicked the switch that set it spinning. The truckers, grudgingly, began to move out of the way. A cop directing traffic at Delancey and the Bowery stopped all north- and south- bound traffic as he cleared a lane for the white Chevy. Moodrow recognized the patrolman. His name was Paul Scotrun and he’d made the mistake of spending most of a night tour in a bar on Second Avenue. The duty sergeant, by way of teaching him a lesson, had placed him in a position of high visibility. Now, his face red with cold, he managed a smile and a wistful salute as the Chevy passed.

Five minutes later they were seated at a small table in the Castellemare Cafe. The restaurant, in the heart of Little Italy, was decorated in the best tourist trap tradition. Gondolas made their way along the walls and the bar was dominated by a highly polished cappucino machine. All the waiters wore white aprons and the tables were covered with red-and-white checked tablecloths. The neighborhood had been solid Italian before the war. Now, the sons and daughters of the immigrants who’d founded Little Italy were leaving as fast as the moving industry could supply the trucks. On the other hand, the tourists, pie-fed Midwesterners mostly, couldn’t seem to get enough calamare fra diavolo. They were thicker than ever.

“I gotta use the toilet, Stanley. Order me a Rheingold and get whatever you want for yourself.”

Patero left without waiting for his assistant to answer. He made his way to the bathrooms in the rear, but instead of entering the door marked “KINGS,” he knocked on an unmarked door, then quickly pushed it open.

“How come ya don’t wait for someone to say, ‘Come in’?” Joe Faci’s tone was mild, his face expressionless.

“Because you already knew I was comin’. You knew I was here before I got to my table. Ain’t that right?”

Faci shrugged. “It don’t make a difference anyway.” He opened a desk drawer and removed an envelope. “Mr. Accacio wants to know how things worked out. With the Puerto Rican.”

“I’ll bet he does.” Patero put the envelope in the inner pocket of his jacket. Stanley, he reflected, wouldn’t be seeing this one. “I’ll bet it’s real important to Mister Accacio. That’s why I wanna deliver the message personally.”

“I could take it to him. I got Mr. Accacio’s complete confidence.”

In Sal Patero’s opinion, Joe Faci was an amazing guy. You couldn’t make him mad-at least not so it showed- but it was fun trying. “Cut the crap, Joey. Stop makin’ out like you got Lucky Luciano in the back room.” He gestured to a door in the far wall. “Steppy’s a neighborhood punk who’s tryin’ to make his way up. He ain’t the fucking capo di tutti capi or whatever you’re callin’ the big boss these days. I got a message to deliver and I wanna deliver it personal.”

Patero’s message was simple enough: the situation had been contained, but don’t let it happen again. Don’t kill civilians. Except for the smell, nobody cares about dead gangsters in the trunks of cars. But if you start blowing away citizens, sooner or later you’re gonna kill someone who matters.

The intercom on Faci’s desk emitted a sharp buzz. “Send him in, Joey.” The voice belonged to Steppy Accacio. “So I could hear his message personal.”

Moodrow sat quietly at his table, sipping at a Schaefer. He was monumentally pissed off. Not that he was surprised by what Patero and he had been doing all morning. He wasn’t even opposed to it. Not really. Cops referred to it as ‘the pad’ and it had been going on for a long time. Moodrow’s Uncle Pavlov had explained it before Moodrow took the entrance exam.

“If you become a cop, Stanley, sooner or later people are gonna offer you money. What you gotta understand is that, as far as the Department is concerned, there’s clean money and dirty money. The boss in the coffee shop won’t let you pay for lunch? That’s clean. That’s expected. Likewise for the mechanic who tunes up your car for half-price. But don’t take money from a burglar. Or a dope addict. Or, God forbid, a rapist. That’s as dirty as it gets. You know about the pad?”

“No.”

Uncle Pavlov had gone on to explain the setup. Every precinct had a bagman who collected from the bookies and the pimps. The captain took the biggest piece, then the lieutenants got theirs, then the sergeants, then a few detectives.

“Beat cops like me get nothing,” he concluded.

“You’re saying that the money just comes along like your paycheck?”

“See, that’s the thing, Stanley. Is the pad clean or is it dirty? Not everybody participates. In fact, if the captain’s clean, there ain’t no pad. If the captain’s clean, then it’s every cop for himself. By the way, I’m sure you heard that gettin’ transferred out to Staten Island is a horrible punishment for a cop. Ask yourself why that should be? A lotta cops live on Staten Island. There’s no violence out there. You could do your tour without worrying that someone’s gonna toss a brick off a roof. So I ask ya, Stanley, why is gettin’ transferred out to the boondocks a punishment?”