A Piece of the Action

“I’m not your fucking ‘boyo,’ Pat. I’m twenty-five years old. And Kate’s not your ‘darlin’ Kathleen,’ either. She’s a twenty-two-year-old woman. You can’t keep her in diapers forever.”

“I didn’t call you in here to fight with you, Stanley.”

“This I already figured.”

Pat Cohan’s face contorted with anger. “Listen, you little prick, I made you and I can break you.”

“That works both ways, Pat. The way I see it, we’re in this together. Till death or the Department do us part.”

Cohan managed a thin smile. He sucked on his unlit cigar. “That’s not entirely true, Stanley, but I’m not here to threaten you. If you remember, I only asked one thing of you when you requested permission to see Kathleen. I asked you to keep her pure until after the wedding.”

Moodrow finally sat down. He shook his head in disgust. “Why don’t you cut the bullshit. Stop living in Never-Never Land. She’s a woman, that’s all. And this ain’t the fucking junior prom. Nobody cares unless the woman gets pregnant. And the people I grew up with don’t even care about that. As long as you do the right thing.”

“She committed a sin, Stanley. And you should have known better. You should have stopped her. Kate is innocent. She’s inexperienced, naive.”

Moodrow thought back to that morning when she’d shown up on his door- step. Innocent? Naive? What she really was was stupid for going to the wrong priest. What she really was was weak for not telling him to stick his penance in his breviary.

“All right, Pat. Let’s say it was a sin. Let’s even say that I took advantage of a naive young girl. So what? It’s over now and there’s nothing you can do to fix it. Kate and I are engaged. That means whatever advantage I took, I’m gonna be makin’ it up to her for the next forty or fifty years. Ya know, when I went to Catholic school, the nuns taught me that my sins were between me and God. So what are you doing here? You so high up in the job, you think you’re God?”

Pat Cohan put the stub of his cigar in the ashtray. He ran his fingers through his silvery hair and leaned forward. “What I want, Stanley, is for you to go away. Take it from a man trapped in a miserable marriage, you and Kate aren’t right for each other. You’re not even close. So why don’t you tell me what you want?”

“What I want is Kate. And if you say she doesn’t want me, if you put that lie in her mouth, I’ll drive my fist through the back of your head.”

“I believe you would, Stanley. But I’m not here to lie to you. I haven’t sent Kathleen to a convent. She’ll be home tomorrow. In the meantime, why don’t you think about what I’ve said? Do you want Homicide? Narcotics? Safes and Lofts? How about a jump in rank? Detective, second grade, with a guarantee of first grade in a year.”

Moodrow felt his anger begin to evaporate as the central truth of Pat Cohan’s message sunk in. This man, Kate’s father, had decided to prevent the marriage. It was just that simple.

“Why are you doing this, Pat? And don’t tell me it’s because we went to bed together. You don’t give two shits about the Church. You’re the biggest goddamned thief in the Department.”

“I’ll ignore that last comment, boyo.” Cohan opened the center desk drawer and took out a fresh cigar. He studied it for a moment, then turned to Moodrow. “As for my reasons, I don’t know where to begin. I thought you were a tough guy, but I was wrong. You’re only tough in the ring. Mentally, you’re not prepared to do what’s necessary to guarantee Kate and her children the kind of life I want them to have. I wouldn’t say it’s your fault, exactly. No, I’d have to say the error was mine. But that doesn’t change anything, does it?”

“Keep going.”

“You’re impulsive and headstrong. Maybe that’s what comes from being victorious. You fought your way into the detectives, just like you fought your way into your engagement. But you never stopped to consider the consequences. You’re like a traveler who desperately wants to arrive at a certain destination without any clear understanding of what he’ll do after he gets there. Patero’s afraid of you. He thinks you’re unpredictable. Of course, Patero’s right in the middle of it, so perhaps he has a right …”

“Bullshit.” Moodrow stood up. “All those rounds? All that training? I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be a detective. You made me into the precinct bagman. As for Kate, you think I’m using her the way I used the ring, but that’s not true. I love Kate and I want her to be my wife. Now, here’s something you might wanna think about: if you fight me and I win, I’m gonna take Kate and migrate to California, like everybody else in the country. Kate’s a religious girl, Pat. She takes all that bullshit about ‘love, honor and obey’ very seriously. If I tell her we’re going, she’ll pack her bags and get on the plane.”

“You’re quick with the threats, Stanley.”

“What have I got to lose?”

“Everything, boyo. Everything.”

“Ya know what I think, boyo? I think your promises are bullshit. Once you’ve got Kate under control, you’ll fuck me any way you can. That’s your rep, Pat. That’s what they say about you. Inspector Cohan never forgets. Never forgives, either. I got nothing to lose.”

Moodrow backed toward the door. He expected Cohan to make some sort of protest, but Cohan merely lit his cigar and leaned back in the chair.

“Something else you might wanna think about, Pat.” Moodrow opened the door without turning away. “Luis Melenguez. You lied to me about Luis Melenguez. It wasn’t a little white lie, either. It was a big black lie. Go confess to Father Ryan. Maybe he’ll order you to tell me the truth.”

Thirteen

January 17

Stanley Moodrow, sitting down to breakfast, knew he had to make a decision about Luis Melenguez. He’d been angry the night before, angry enough to threaten his benefactor, Pat Cohan. He’d also been shrewd enough to recognize (and enjoy) the fear his threat inspired. But that didn’t mean he would or should follow through. Sure, he wanted Kate Cohan. That was obvious. But he couldn’t see how investigating the murder of Luis Melenguez would result in the two of them walking down the aisle. In fact, no matter how Moodrow examined the situation, it seemed that tracking down Melenguez’s killer would have the opposite effect. Especially if Pat Cohan was trying to cover it up.

What he needed to do was think it out. The only problem was that he couldn’t manage to concentrate on anything more complex than the Daily News. His eyes scanned the paper while his brain spun like a raindrop in a tornado.

A Brooklyn judge named Leibowitz had ordered a special grand jury to investigate the practice of giving high school diplomas to kids who couldn’t read above the fifth-grade level. This was the same judge who’d charged the grand jury to investigate “the tide of terror and lawlessness” in Brooklyn schools, then later approved the grand jury’s recommendation that cops be stationed in every high school.

Moodrow started to lay the paper down when another headline caught his eye. Housing Board Bias Probe Is Voted by Wagner Group. The charge, “racial and religious discrimination” in the projects, was nothing new. When the first of the projects had gone up before WWII, they’d been used to service individual neighborhoods. On the Lower East Side, for instance, the Italians had gotten the Governor Smith Houses while the Jews had gotten the Jacob Riis Houses. The policy had seemed reasonable at the time, an attempt to keep neighborhoods and traditions intact. The only problem was that five hundred thousand impoverished Puerto Ricans had migrated to New York in the ten years following the war. More than a million blacks had come as well, fleeing southern poverty and Jim Crow legislation. The city had responded by constructing tens of thousands of low-income apartments, but no matter how fast projects went up, there were far more applicants than apartments. Waiting lists were created, lists based on ethnic, racial and neighborhood considerations. Now, the chickens were coming home to roost.