whispered. “We wanna do this quiet.”
Seventeen
Stanley Moodrow, unwashed and unshaven, was spooning Maxwell House coffee into his percolator when he suddenly realized that he was having the time of his life. Sure, he was in a battle (a war, really) and there was always the possibility of losing, but it wasn’t the kind of useless combat that fed the dreams of bloodthirsty spectators. He wasn’t likely to come out of it with a cracked nose or a split eyebrow, either. No, what he was doing, he told himself, was hunting for truly dangerous game. Like that Englishman who went from one Indian village to another, shooting man-eating tigers from the back of an elephant.
He dumped the percolator on a burner and went into the bathroom to shave. The water was barely warm, which wasn’t so great because Kate Cohan had telephoned the night before and told him that she’d decided to give the Lower East Side a chance.
“Show me around,” she’d said. “And I promise to keep an open mind.” Moodrow wondered if her open mind extended to an occasional lack of hot water. Not having a ready answer, he worked up a lather and quickly brushed it across his face. He grabbed his razor, examined it closely, then decided to change the blade. Usually, he managed to squeeze three or four shaves out of a Gilette, but the last couple were only bearable when he had plenty of hot water. When the water was this cold, he either changed the blade or his face ended up the color of a ripe strawberry.
He stared at himself in the mirror for a moment before he began to scrape at his beard. Mornings were special times for him. Ever since his mother died and he’d awakened to find himself alone, he’d used the early hours to analyze his problems. At first, he’d concerned himself with other fighters, then-strengths and weaknesses. Then he’d turned his attention to the job and his personal ambitions. Now, he found himself preoccupied with the details of the hunt. Much to his surprise, they threatened to overwhelm all other considerations, even his impending marriage.
After leaving the house on Pitt Street, he’d done what any good detective had to do. He’d canvassed the immediate neighborhood, knocking on doors, hoping that someone had seen or heard something on the night Luis Melenguez had been murdered. What he wanted was a witness, but he wasn’t surprised to come up empty. Not only had the murder taken place more than two weeks before, the Lower East Side wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where good citizens eagerly came forth to share information with the police. As far as most residents of the Lower East Side were concerned, the cops were as dangerous as the criminals.
The whole thing would have been a lot easier if he could have dragged the O’Neills into the 7th and had them look at mug shots until they put names and faces on the men who’d come visiting the day after Christmas. That wasn’t going to happen, of course, but he, Moodrow, had gotten a good look at the drug dealer called Santo, and Santo, according to Al and Betty O’Neill, worked for Steppy Accacio, the man who’d sent the shooters. Which meant that Stanley Moodrow could look at mug shots, too. Or he could if the 7th wasn’t off-limits.
Moodrow wondered what would happen if he just walked in there, pulled the mug books and started turning the pages. He couldn’t imagine Patero trying to stop him from doing what his badge entitled him to do. No, Patero would simply get on the phone and make Santo vanish. Much better to let Patero and Pat Cohan think they were in control of the situation.
What he needed was a photograph to show around. Maybe he didn’t have a stable of informants like most of the veterans, but he’d grown up on the Lower East Side. He knew a lot of people, people on both sides of the law and people who straddled the fence. If he had something to show, he’d find Santo easily enough.
The doorbell rang. He answered the door, finding Allen Epstein, as expected, and Paul Maguire.
“Hey, Paul, whatta ya say? C’mon in. You, too, Sarge.” Moodrow led the two cops into the kitchen and poured out the ritual mugs of coffee.
“I hope you don’t mind that I brought Paul with me,” Epstein said. “Paul’s an old friend of mine. You could trust him a hundred percent.”
“That mean you wanna go on the record, Paul?” Moodrow asked. He couldn’t shake the simple fact that Maguire had walked away from a homicide. Sure, Patero had
“Look, I’m willing to help you out,” Maguire replied evenly. “As long as I don’t have to put my head on the chopping block. You hear what I’m sayin’, Stanley? I got three kids and a heavy mortgage.”
What Moodrow wanted to say was, “Luis Melenguez had a wife and kids, too,” but he held his tongue. Antagonizing Maguire wouldn’t get him any closer to the man who’d killed Melenguez. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder how many other cops hid behind their families and their mortgages when a superior officer snapped his fingers.
“Why don’t you start by telling me what happened with Patero? Did he just
“The first thing you gotta understand is that my partner, Samuelson, is in Patero’s pocket. He wants to make detective, first grade, and Patero’s his rabbi. As for Melenguez, we did all the usual things. Interviewed everyone in the house, recovered the slugs, diagrammed the crime scene, took blood samples, dusted for prints. We knew that O’Neill was bullshitting us, but him and his old lady were busted up pretty bad, so we let ’em go off to the hospital. What I figured to do was come back and squeeze ’em, but then Patero says to lay off. He says the investigation’s going over to Organized Crime, that certain people (which he naturally can’t name) are registered informants in a city-wide probe and we don’t wanna blow their cover. I figured he was full of shit, but I kept my mouth shut. I’m not sayin’ it didn’t bother me, because it did. That’s why I’m here …”
“Wait a minute, Paul,” Moodrow interrupted. “You said you dusted for prints?”
“Yeah.”
“You come up with anything?”
“The problem is that we came up with too much. According to the lab boys, we got eight identifiable unknowns. You get one print, you can try to match it up. It takes about a week, but it
“I get the message.”
“What about you, Stanley?” Epstein said. “What have you been doing?”
Moodrow took a moment to think about it, then detailed most of his visit to the O’Neills, leaving out any mention of notarized statements. Up to this point, he’d trusted Epstein completely. But Epstein had kids and a mortgage, too. “What I need is a photo,” he concluded. “Something to show around the neighborhood. The story is that Santo and the men who killed Melenguez all work for Steppy Accacio. If I can run down Santo, I can use him to find the shooters.”
“You’re most likely right, Stanley,” Epstein said, “but what’re you gonna do when you find them? With the O’Neills on the run, you haven’t got any witnesses.”
“Maybe I’ll find the gun they used. Maybe I’ll encourage them to confess to their evil deeds. Maybe I’ll take their statements and hand them over to the newspapers.”
“You can’t do that,” Maguire said. “You can’t go to the papers.”
“Why not?”
“Try to understand,” Epstein said. “There’s a lot of good cops out there, cops who
“That means they’ll help me as long as there’s no risk to their precious reputations.”
“Yeah,” Maguire shouted. “As long as they don’t get hurt. What do you think, everyone’s got your balls? Lemme tell ya something, Stanley, your chances of getting out of this are about a hundred to one. If you go public, if you crack the blue wall, you won’t have a friend in the job. Nobody. That’d reduce your chances to a
Moodrow sipped at his coffee. He needed friends, that was obvious enough, friends with access to the pool of information available to every detective. If he lost his temper, he’d have to dial the operator for information.
