long. How could it? The small frame house wasn’t exactly a mansion in Upper Saddle River. On the other hand, it was a long way from the roach-infested tenements of lower Manhattan.
The deep chimes of the doorbell interrupted his reverie and he quickly took a seat in the leather chair behind his desk. He loved making his workers come all the way to New Jersey for business meetings. He loved it as much as they obviously hated it.
“Ya company’s here,” Angie yelled from the living room.
“Send ’em in,” Steppy called back, his face reddening with anger. The bitch was supposed to usher his guests into his presence, not scream like a vendor in the Fulton Fish Market.
“Steppy,” Joe Faci said, walking into the room, “sorry we’re late. The snow held us up. How are ya doin’ this morning?”
“That depends, Joe.” Steppy rose to offer his hand to Joe and his companion, Santo Silesi. “It depends on what you’re gonna tell me. Siddown.”
Before they could begin talking, Angie Accacio appeared, pushing an oak serving cart. A small pot of steaming coffee, a creamer and sugar bowl, three small cups and saucers, and a plate of small pastries were carefully arranged on its polished surface.
“Would yiz serve, Angie?” Steppy kept his voice even, despite the fact that it wasn’t a request. He waited patiently as she filled the cups and handed them, first to the guests and then to him. Until she walked out, closing the door behind her.
“All right, enough with the bullshit,” he snapped. “The Hebe’ll be here in a few minutes. Let’s get to it. How’d ya make out, Sandy?”
“What they did to Rocco? I didn’t see any of it. The Jew wouldn’t let me near it.”
“This I already know. Joe told me.”
“Then you also know that he’s got me standing around in project playgrounds with fifty bags of heroin.”
Steppy Accacio smiled indulgently. Santo Silesi was his oldest sister’s firstborn, a Tuscan on both sides. That was one thing the Sicilians had right. That bit about the family. It wasn’t a foolproof protection against treachery, but it was as close as you could get.
“Just be a little patient, Sandy,” Accacio said. “I’ll pull ya outta there as soon as possible. Meanwhile, ya should watch everything goin’ on with the Jew. Where he lives. Where he goes. Who he hangs out with. When the time comes, I wanna be able to find him.”
Silesi raised his hands, palm up. “Whatever it takes, right? That’s the only way to look at it. By the way, sales were better than we expected. I moved three hundred bags yesterday.”
“The take’s better,” Joe Faci interrupted, “but that might not be so good for us. The Hebe wants to buy in quantity. He claims he’s got the bucks to go for half an ounce. He’ll package himself.”
Accacio bit into a cannoli. The crust was flaky, the filling moist and sweet. “I don’t mind so much that the Hebe’s ambitious. I mean where’s he gonna go? He can’t do nothin’ without we say so first.
“Why don’t we just shoot the mother-fucker,” Santo blurted out. “I mean every time I turn around the sheeny’s makin’ me eat shit.” He didn’t bother to add the simple fact that he was
“Yeah,” Steppy said, “I heard about that. What you gotta do, Sandy, is keep ya self-control. Like I said, I’m gonna pull you outta there soon. And when I do, I’m gonna make the Hebe report directly to you. I’m gonna put you in charge.”
“He ain’t gonna like
“
All three were laughing when the doorbell sounded. They were still wiping the smirks off their faces when Angie led Jake Leibowitz into the room. “Jake,” Steppy Accacio said, rising to offer his hand, “we meet at last.”
Stanley Moodrow spent most of the day thinking about what he was going to do. Thinking about whether he should do
But there was also the chance that Patero was right, that Allen Epstein was simply mistaken. Maybe the sergeant was confusing Melenguez with someone else. Maybe, despite all appearances, Melenguez’s death
In the end, there were too many ‘maybes’ for a man as inherently curious as Stanley Moodrow. What he did was go down to the files and pull the paperwork. He didn’t expect anyone to notice and nobody did. Paperwork was Moodrow’s job.
He went through the file systematically, beginning with the patrolman’s report and proceeding to Epstein’s observations, the preliminary reports of the two detectives and the forensic unit’s description of the crime scene. Melenguez had been gunned down from inside an office on the first floor, rear, of 800 Pitt Street with a.45 caliber pistol. There was no doubt about it. Melenguez had been hit four times and all four slugs had been recovered, two from the hallway behind the victim and two from the victim’s body.
Moodrow turned to the Medical Examiner’s report. The M.E.’s description was gruesome enough-the first shot, the one that’d killed him, had blown away half his face; the next three had turned his abdominal cavity into tomato soup-but there was nothing in it to contradict the detectives’ preliminary assessments.
The witness interviews came next. There were fourteen interviews with women and one with a man, a further indication, assuming 800 Pitt Street wasn’t a nunnery, that Melenguez had been gunned down inside a whorehouse. Moodrow scanned the interviews as quickly as possible, noting the name of the only man.
Finishing, Moodrow realized that Epstein had been right about one thing: none of the witnesses, even though all had been isolated during the questioning, had been willing to admit they’d eyeballed the shooting. Which raised several questions. Melenguez had been standing in the doorway. The perpetrator had been standing inside the office. Epstein was of the opinion that Melenguez had wandered into a robbery in progress. But wasn’t it also possible that Melenguez had
Moodrow turned to the follow-ups, the DD5’s. The two detectives handling the case, John Samuelson and Paul Maguire, had interviewed Melenguez’s employer, a trucker named Levy, as well as several co-workers. The portrait that emerged was of a hard-working, ambitious immigrant. Melenguez had been in New York for slightly less than six months. He’d shown up for work every day. He had no friends outside of his fellow workers and spent his nights listening to the radio and writing letters home.
Moodrow recalled the picture Nenita Melenguez had shown him. He tried to imagine the tiny man with the jug ears packing a rod, pulling it on the pimp who ran the whorehouse. He couldn’t even come close.
The obvious next step was to speak to the suits who’d handled the case before it was farmed out of the precinct. As it happened, Moodrow knew Paul Maguire fairly well. Maguire had still been in uniform when Moodrow came onto the job and for a short time before Maguire’s appointment to the detectives, the two of them had walked overlapping beats.
That was on the plus side. There was a minus side as well. Moodrow knew he could return the file with no one the wiser. He could still put it back and forget the whole thing. But once he started talking to other cops, he had no way to predict who might whisper what message into Sal Patero’s ear. Paul Maguire had always been friendly, but how was Moodrow to know where Maguire’s loyalties lay? Ordinarily, jobs were given out to any detective foolish enough to be loitering in the squad room when a call came into the precinct. On the other hand, Patero might have personally assigned the case to Maguire because he knew Maguire could be trusted to do what he was told.
