A Piece of the Action

Your problem’s with your girlfriend.”

Moodrow snorted. “Ya wanna know something, Sarge, you’re a better psychiatrist than you are a trainer. I could tell Pat Cohan to go fuck himself, but how do I explain it to Kate? How do I tell her that her father’s a crook? Kate worships her old man.”

“When are you getting married?”

“June fifteenth.”

“You’re gonna do it in a church, right? In a Catholic church?”

Moodrow smiled again. “Kate’s religious. Very religious.”

“So, once you’re married, you’re married forever, right?”

“What’s the point?”

“The point is that you have to develop a strategy. And it has to be long-term. Right now, Cohan’s holding an axe over your head. But after you’re married, the axe is in your hands. Catholics marry for life. You wanna pick up stakes and move a thousand miles away, Kate’s gonna figure it’s her religious duty to go with you. It’s just a matter of holding out. And not getting used to the money.”

Moodrow shook his head in wonder. “You’re a devious bastard, Sarge. But what about the Playtex Burglar? What do I do if they ask me to make another ‘arrest’?”

“Look, Stanley, as slow as you were, you oughta be able to figure it out for yourself. Give ground. Take some punishment. Hold on when you’re hurt. The closer you get to the wedding, the harder it’s gonna be for Cohan to get between you and Kate. The thing is, Stanley, that I always figured you for a tough guy, but I only saw you in the ring. What you want here is a quick answer. It’s only natural. But that isn’t gonna happen. You gotta keep your guard up and go the distance.”

“All right, Sarge, I get the picture. Maybe I should’ve studied for the sergeant’s exam, instead of reaching out for the detectives. That’s what I was doing before you came along.”

Epstein looked at his watch. “I gotta get out of here, Stanley. It’s almost eight o’clock. You goin’ into the house?”

“Later. I’ll be in later. I’m supposed to meet with an ADA at nine-thirty.”

“Banker’s hours. I guess being a big-shot detective isn’t all bad.”

Moodrow ignored the comment. “There’s one other thing I wanted to ask you about, Sarge. You remember a guy named Luis Melenguez?”

“Can’t say that I do.”

“He got killed in a Pitt Street whorehouse the day after Christmas. A pimp.”

“Oh yeah, I remember him. I responded to the scene. What makes you say he was a pimp?”

“That’s what Pat Cohan told me. Melenguez was a friend of a friend. That kind of thing. I asked Patero about it, but it was Pat Cohan who told me it was a mob rubout.”

“Pat Cohan told you bullshit. Melenguez was blown apart with a forty-five. I admit that the crime scene was pretty messed up by the time I got there-you can imagine what happens when a beat cop walks into a building with twenty half-naked women-but, from what I could make of it, Melenguez was standing in a doorway when he bought it. At the time, I figured he walked into the middle of a robbery. You know what I’m talking about, right? It was your basic wrong place/wrong time situation. We questioned the whores and the pimp who ran the place, but, naturally, nobody saw anything. The suits got there before we were finished and I turned it over to them. Standard procedure.”

“Maybe that was the only chance the mob had to get him. Maybe they just saw an opportunity and took it.”

“I can’t buy that, Stanley. The guy was dressed poor. Real poor. He looked like he just came off the boat. Besides, nobody uses a forty-five to make a hit. Not if they know what they’re doing. A forty-five sounds like a cannon when it goes off. Plus, when you’re putting one behind the ear from six inches away, you don’t need that much power. No, if Melenguez was a pimp, then I’m the Pope.”

Moodrow sat back in his chair. “What I’m hearin’ is that somebody’s bullshitting me. And what I don’t understand is why they’re doin’ it.”

“Stanley, the job runs on bullshit. Get used to it. As for why? Well, you’re a detective, right? You wanna find out the truth, go detect.”

Twelve

January 16

For Antonio “steppy” Accacio, this was the best time of the day. He was in the bathroom of his ten-room Montclair, New Jersey, home and his wife, Angela, was shaving his face. He would have preferred to have his own barber, his personal barber, do the shaving, but the ungrateful bastard simply refused to make the trip from Mulberry Street to Montclair despite everything he, Steppy Accacio, had done for the man.

But that was the way it was in life. You had to accept the bad with the good. Sure, you found some piece-of- shit swamp guinea and lent him the money to start his own business. Sure, you expected a little gratitude, something over and above the 20 % interest you were charging. That didn’t mean you’d get it.

“Hey, no laugh. You laugh, I cut.”

Steppy opened his eyes to look at his wife. She was leaning over him, patiently scraping away at his heavy beard. As usual, his eyes dropped to her breasts. Angie was ten years younger than he was and her jugs were still firm. He wanted to touch her, to feel her dark nipples pushing against the palm of his hand. But the last time he’d tried that move, she’d sliced him so bad, he ended up with four stitches in his right earlobe.

“Almos’ finish,” Angela said.

“Looks like I survived again. Right, Angie?”

“No talk.”

She wiped his face with the hot towel she’d used to soak his beard, then slapped on the aftershave. Steppy inhaled the fragrance of Roma Brava. It was sweeter than Aqua-Velva. More in keeping with the old country, which was where it came from. Which was where his wife came from. Steppy had no particular love for Italy. He’d never been there and had no desire to go, but these little touches impressed the ‘mustache Petes’ who still clung to the reins of power. Who needed to be impressed as much as they needed the millions of dollars pouring into the pockets of their six-hundred-dollar suits.

Steppy got off the chair and shrugged into the silk dressing gown his wife held out to him.

“We’re havin’ company,” he announced. “Three, four guys. Make sure you got enough coffee and pastries.” He threw her a hard look. Like most Sicilian women, she had a sharp tongue. He’d been trying to break her of the habit, but had yet to come up with a method that didn’t require breaking her body as well.

“You tell me this lassa night. Why you gotta repeat? I’m no stupido.”

What you are, Steppy thought, is halfway to being a fuckin’ nigger. It was funny how her cousins’ descriptions had left that little fact out. Olive was how they’d described her complexion. Well, there were two kinds of olives, green and black, and Angela was a lot closer to the black kind. Not that she really looked like one of them. Not that she had a flat nose and big lips. Not that anyone would actually say anything about her complexion. But, still, the cousins should have told him.

He watched her butt twitch as she walked through their bedroom, then turned to admire his own complexion in the mirror. The simple fact that his parents were not from Sicily stared back at him. Blond hair, blue eyes, milky skin that burned in the sun. One thing for sure, his ancestors hailed from the highlands of Tuscany, not the mountains of Sicily, a fact which (at least according to the prevailing mythology) meant he couldn’t rise much beyond his present station.

“Let ’em keep their secret fuckin’ society,” Steppy muttered, patting his blond hair into place. “I know where I’m goin’, even if they don’t.”

He left the bathroom, crossing his bedroom and going downstairs to the den. The journey didn’t take very