A Piece of the Action

Pat Cohan sighed. “I can’t wait to hear it.”

“Ya remember the spic who got iced on Pitt Street? In the whorehouse?”

“I’m not senile. Yet.”

“Well, Stanley asked me about him this afternoon.”

Cohan’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. He rejected his first thought, that Stanley Moodrow was one of the headhunters from Internal Affairs, because it was too gruesome to contemplate.

“It ain’t what ya thinkin’,” Sal continued. “The spic, Melenguez, was a friend of one of Stanley’s neighbors. All Stanley wants to know is how it happened and where the investigation’s goin’. I told him I’d check on it and get back to him.”

“This is what happens,” Cohan grunted, “when you put a cop in his home precinct. Cases become personal. It destroys perspective.”

“The perspective here is that we’re not doin’ shit to find the perpetrator. The perspective is that even if we don’t know who the shooter is, we know who sent him. Now, whatta ya wanna tell Stanley?”

Pat Cohan took his time thinking it over. He re-lit his cigar, then blew on the ash until it glowed. “The first thing we better do is take it out of the precinct. Kick it up to the Organized Crime Task Force. They’ve already got a backload of mob killings that’ll keep them busy for the next five years. I expect to see Stanley tonight. I’ll tell him the spic was a pimp and we think his killing was mob-related, part of a turf war.”

“Sounds okay.” Patero glanced down at his watch. “Jeez, it’s almost nine o’clock. I ain’t laid eyes on my kids in two days. Lemme get the hell out of here. Maybe I’ll be home before they go to bed.”

Pat Cohan left his desk as soon as the door shut behind Sal Patero. He walked across the room, to a small table near the window, and sat down. A half-finished jigsaw puzzle lay on the table and he began to pick up individual pieces and fit them into an apple tree in the right hand corner of the puzzle. With his hands busy, his mind was free to consider his daughter’s boyfriend.

That’s the way he wanted to think of Stanley Moodrow-as a boyfriend, an unsuitable suitor, not as Kathleen’s fiance. Cohan had been aware of Moodrow’s independent streak all along. Aware of it as a potential problem, especially if Stanley had a conscience to go along with it. Now the chickens were coming home to roost. Or, better still, the fox was in the chicken coop.

Like any good farmer, Cohan understood that the fox had to go. One way or the other. Unfortunately, the chicken, in this case, couldn’t be replaced by a fertilized egg. He thought, briefly, about living alone in his fine big house. Alone except for his crazy wife. He was fifty-nine years old. Retirement was coming, whether he liked it or not. He’d been counting on Kathleen and the grandchildren she’d give him to make that retirement bearable. If he forced her to choose between himself and Stanley Moodrow, there was always the possibility she’d choose Moodrow. He, Pat Cohan, was far too close to the situation to make an accurate judgment.

What he needed to do, he decided, was to move slowly. Wait for Moodrow to fall on his face. The kid was headstrong, stubborn. Sooner or later, like any other beginner, he’d make a mistake. And when he did, Pat Cohan would be standing there, shotgun in hand, like any good farmer with a fox in the coop.

Ten minutes later, when Moodrow knocked on the door, Pat Cohan was ready.

“It’s not locked,” he called, moving back to his desk.

“Evening, Pat.”

“Ah, Stanley. Yer lookin’ good, son. Swelling’s gone down. Bruises almost gone. Lookin’ good, all right.” He fumbled in his desk drawer. “Have a cigar?”

“No thanks, Pat. You know I don’t smoke.”

“Well, boyo, now that your fightin’ days are in the past, it might be time to cultivate a few healthy vices.”

“Maybe you’re right, but I don’t think I wanna begin at the top.” He nodded toward the cigar. “One of these days, maybe I’ll start with a cigarette and work my way up.”

Pat Cohan chuckled appreciatively. He swiveled his chair away from the desk, opened a cabinet built into the bookcase behind him, and fetched a bottle of Bushmill’s and two glasses. “Perhaps I might interest you in a different vice.”

“Sure, Pat, that’d be great.”

Cohan filled the two glasses halfway, then handed one to Moodrow. “Down the hatch, boyo.”

Moodrow managed not to choke, despite the fire that raged in his throat. “Damn,” he said, “I’m not used to this.”

Pat Cohan allowed himself to chuckle sympathetically, then straightened in his chair. “I’m afraid we have something serious to discuss, Stanley. Something unpleasant.”

“This I already figured out.”

“Sal Patero’s complaining. He says you’re not cooperating. He says you don’t care for what you’re doing.”

Moodrow sat back in his chair, looking for the right words, the words that would get his message across without offending Pat Cohan. He, too, had given the matter a lot of thought and he, too, was unsure of what Kathleen would do if forced to choose between her father and her lover.

“The first thing is that what Sal’s got me doing came as a complete surprise. I know you’re only trying to look out for me and Kathleen. I got no problem with that. But I gotta admit that I would’ve liked to work my way up. The other guys in the squad hate my guts and I always got along with everybody.”

“Stanley, if ya want to get ahead, you can’t worry about what some …”

“Let me finish, Pat. Before the lecture.” The whiskey was rapidly going to Moodrow’s head. Its main effect, at that moment, was fearlessness. “I went along with the collections, with the pad. I can live with that, because it’s been goin’ on for a long time. Also, the thing Sal’s got me doing with the DA’s office, the paperwork and that, is also acceptable. I’d rather be conducting investigations, but I understand that I’m doing something important. What bothers me is what he asked me to do with the kid, Zayas. I won’t put these heavy beefs on some punk kid’s head. It’s not right.”

Pat Cohan started to interrupt, but Moodrow waved him off, again. “Everything Zayas did, all those burglaries, don’t add up to a thousand dollars. Zayas is nothing but an amateur who’s small enough to get through a ventilation duct. I can’t go along with making him into a major criminal.”

“Is it my turn, now?” Cohan waited for Moodrow to nod, then continued. “It’s a question of loyalty here, boyo. Not loyalty to me or to Sal Patero. We’re talkin’ about loyalty to the Department, to the tradition. The public doesn’t give two figs for our problems. All the public wants is results. You really can’t blame them. Between the papers and the TV, they’re scared to death. I’m tellin’ ya, Stanley, your average good citizen sees a mugger on every corner. They see rapists under their beds. Murderers in the closet.”

Cohan took a minute to suck on his cigar. “There’s no way to educate the public, boyo. There’s no way to show them how things really work. Yet, we have to protect the Department from its enemies. Think about it, Stanley. Every time we turn around, we’re being attacked by some nigger-loving politician out to pick up a few votes. We have to protect ourselves.” Cohan sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I don’t wanna turn this into a book, Stanley, because the answer is simple enough. We protect ourselves with statistics. As long as our bullshit statistics compare favorably with the bullshit statistics coming out of other cities, nobody can fault us. Now, it’s true, boyo, some of the things we do to protect the Department aren’t particularly pleasant. But those of us who’ve been in the game for a long time understand that our first loyalty is to the NYPD, not to some spic from the Lower East Side. And let me tell you one more thing, Stanley. A cop who fails to exhibit that loyalty, can’t move up the ladder. I don’t care if he’s got the mayor for a rabbi.”

“You have a point there, Pat, but I’m not gonna do it, anyway.” Moodrow, to his surprise, answered without hesitation. “The bad guys are the bad guys. They have to pay for their crimes, even if it means doing what O’Brien and Mitkowski did to Zayas. But I’m not gonna frame some poor schmuck. If that means I never get above detective, third grade, then so be it.”

Pat Cohan refilled his glass, then offered the bottle to Moodrow. “Have another, Stanley.”

“No thanks, Pat. I’m still recovering from the first one.”

“I know this is delicate, boyo.” Cohan sipped at his drink, taking his time. “And the last thing I want to be is