A Piece of the Action

The man turned to O’Neill without answering. “I got a delivery for you, Al,” he said. “Collect.” He dropped a small paper bag on the desk and stepped back while a sweating Al O’Neill counted out two hundred dollars, then handed it over.

“All right?” O’Neill asked without looking up.

“Fine, Al. Just fine.” The man started to turn away, then checked himself. “I think you cut yourself, Al. Up there next to your eye. Better put some iodine on that. You don’t wanna get infected. Also, your front door’s open. That’s why I came in. I figured something might be wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Moodrow said, standing up and turning toward the much smaller man. “We’re just havin’ a conversation. A private conversation, if you take my meaning. You could shut the door on your way out.”

“I’ll do that.”

Moodrow watched the man retreat, heard the front door slam, then turned back to Al O’Neill. “What’s in the bag, Al? You gettin’ a condom delivery?”

O’Neill groaned, but made no effort to prevent Moodrow from emptying the contents of the paper bag on the desk.

“This looks like dope to me.” Moodrow pointed at the forty small glassine envelopes. “It looks like a lot of dope. The little lady can’t be using all this horse. You gotta be supplying it to the girls. At a profit, of course.”

O’Neill, to Moodrow’s surprise, burst into tears. “He made you for a cop,” the fat man blubbered. “I know he made you.”

“You worried about a small-time pusher? A big man like you?”

“He’s connected. If he talks, I’m dead. And he’s gonna talk.”

O’Neill was close to caving in, to spilling his guts. Moodrow could feel it. The fat man was like a little kid standing by the edge of a swimming pool. He was afraid of the water, but once he got wet, he’d stay in there all afternoon. The temptation was to push him over the edge, but Moodrow instinctively knew that wouldn’t work. He knew that this particular child had to be convinced that jumping was in his own best interest.

“Tell me what you wanna do, Al,” Moodrow finally said.

“What?”

“Look, whoever that kid was, he’s already seen you, right? We can’t take that back. Plus, a murder was committed in this room. We can’t take that back, either. So, you take it from here. You tell me what you wanna do.”

“I wanna get my ass outta here in a hurry,” O’Neill said without hesitation. “I got money put away in the bank. I wanna take it and run.”

“Good. I’m glad you said that, because it means you know that going to jail won’t protect you. Whoever’s after you can reach right into the Tombs and pluck you out. Am I right?”

“Keep goin’.”

“Okay, you told me what you want. Being that fair is fair, I’m gonna tell you what I want. I want you to tell me what happened here on December 26. All of it. I wanna know who was here and why they were here. I wanna know who they worked for and if any cops were involved. Once you make me believe that you’re telling the truth, you get to write everything down in your own handwriting and sign it. Then your wife does the same thing and we stroll over to the drug store on Delancey Street so we can have your signatures notarized. After we’re all finished, I’ll let you run as far and as fast as you can. And I won’t ask where you’re going. How’s that sound?”

O’Neill stared up at Moodrow, his look a mixture of confusion and hope. “I don’t know what to do,” he admitted. “All I know is that I’m screwed.”

“Why don’t you start with the night of December twenty-sixth. Somebody came into this office and assaulted your wife. Why? Were they here to rob you? Was it another pimp? Tell me what happened, Al. These people are gonna to kill you if they get the chance. You don’t owe them anything.”

“There were three of them,” Al O’Neill finally began, “and they were here because I was late with my payments.”

Fifteen

January 18

Steppy Accacio was in a towering rage. In the first place, it was only eleven o’clock in the morning, way too early to be dealing with major problems. In the second place, his bitch of a Sicilian wife was nowhere to be found.

“Where ya hidin’, Angie?” he shouted. “Ya humpin’ the paperboy? Ya humpin’ the goddamn Fuller Brush man? Who ya humpin’, Angie?”

Accacio roared through the house, screaming his wife’s name at the top of his lungs. He knew he was wasting time, wasting valuable time, but he couldn’t help himself. When his temper went off, it went off. There was nothing he could do except ride it out.

Still, he’d feel better when he found his lazy wife and gave her a few good reasons to answer him the first time he called her name. When he let the pressure roaring in his temples out through his fists.

He was down in the basement, still shouting, when he heard his Cadillac (his brand-new Cadillac) pull into the garage. There she was, out shopping when he wanted her. Playing around in the department stores. Buying some kind of bullshit they didn’t need and never would need.

“Welcome home, bitch,” he hissed as she came into the kitchen with a bag of groceries in her arms.

“I got fresh rolls,” Angie said, holding the paper bag between them. “And some fruits. For you breakfast.”

Steppy Accacio slapped the groceries out of her hand. The truth was that he didn’t care what was in the bag. He didn’t give two shits if it was filled with hundred-dollar bills. The bitch was gonna get what she deserved. Even if she didn’t deserve it. He slapped her in the face, then slapped her again.

“I want you here when I want you here,” he shouted. “I don’t want you somewheres else.”

She made no move to defend herself, her arms limp at her sides, head lowered. For some reason, this made Steppy Accacio even angrier. It made him want to really work her over, to bust her ribs, crack her nose, split her lips. He could almost taste the blood.

But there was no time for it. Joe Faci and Santo Silesi were on their way over. If he did the job on Angie, she’d require some kind of medical attention and that would only complicate what was already getting out of hand.

He reached out and pulled her coat off, then grabbed her blouse and yanked it so hard the buttons flew across the kitchen.

“Get out of those clothes,” he ordered. “You could sit up in your bedroom for the rest of the day. I don’t wanna see ya dressed. Maybe you won’t go nowheres if ya tits’re hangin’ out.”

Angie, already tugging at the hooks on her bra, started to walk past him, but he pushed her back against the kitchen table. “Do it here. I wanna make sure ya don’t defy me. Bein’ as ya not a person I could trust.”

Steppy grinned, enjoying her obvious humiliation. She was probably blushing, he decided, even if you couldn’t see it through that dark Sicilian skin. Angie was a devout Catholic, and despite all the bullshit about Sicilians being so lusty, sex with her was an obligation, like going to church on Christmas and Easter. Ordinarily, he much preferred the kinds of games he played with the whores under his control, but this was different. This was an opportunity. He felt the blood pounding in his temples start to pound in his crotch.

“Nice tits, Angie. I admit it. Ya got a nice set of bazoomas.”

And it was the truth, too. Maybe, someday, their kids (if they ever managed to have kids) would drag those grapefruits down to her waist. But for now they rode high, pointing right at his lips. He reached out and took her nipples between his fingers and twisted until he was sure it hurt. She didn’t cry out, of course. She never cried out.