A Piece of the Action

have played the part, maybe even gotten a title fight against a champion looking for an easy payday. Maybe, if he’d been real lucky …

The kids sitting alongside him didn’t understand any of it, the victories or the defeats. They couldn’t know what it felt like to give up the dream when you’d already come halfway. There were twenty-four thousand cops in the NYPD and twenty-one thousand were out there pounding a beat. Most of them would spend their entire careers on the street. Checking the backs of closed hardware stores. Directing traffic in the rain. Hoofing it from one call box to another. It would pay the rent, but it was a long way from heavyweight champion of the world.

Thank God for civil service exams. There was a way to move up in the job without the direct approval of the brass. You pass the sergeant’s exam, you’re a sergeant, the lieutenant’s exam, you’re a lieutenant, the captain’s exam, you’re a captain. That wasn’t the way Stanley Moodrow wanted to do it, but if Plan A failed, he’d go that route. Plan A was to be appointed to the detectives, to carry the Gold Shield, to spend his workdays in a suit instead of a uniform.

It was a nice dream, but there was no detective’s exam to take. Detectives were appointed by other detectives and, according to his Uncle Pavlov, there was more politics in that Gold Shield than in the rest of the Department put together. In order even to be considered for the detectives, you had to catch the attention of someone already in the detectives. Which was almost impossible, because beat cops rarely came into contact with the suits. Meanwhile, there were dozens of cops out there whose fathers, brothers and uncles already carried the Gold Shield.

“If you wanna get the attention of the suits,” Uncle Pavlov explained, “the best way to do it is by making a big collar. The kind that gets your name in the papers. But you have to be careful not to step on any toes. The rule is that detectives detect and patrolmen patrol. If you stumble onto a robbery in progress and blow the scum away, you’re a hero. If you follow a burglar for a month, waiting to catch him inside a warehouse, you’re a hotdog.”

“I understand, Uncle Pavlov,” Moodrow replied. “But what I’m hearing is that I’m never gonna get an appointment unless I get lucky. You should pardon me when I tell you that I don’t see myself as a lucky guy.”

Pavlov Moodrow tapped his nephew on the forehead. “Then why don’t you be a smart guy, Stanley. You got good grades all the way through high school. You didn’t fall down, even when your father passed over. Do yourself a favor, go up to City College and take some classes. Study for the sergeant’s exam in your spare time. If the detectives call you up, that’s great, but if they don’t, you got something to fall back on. And there’s no luck involved in it.”

Moodrow took the advice to heart. Twice a week, in addition to his duties as a beat cop on the Lower East Side, he rode the subway up to City College and sat through a boring lecture. He managed to accumulate eighteen credits in three years, a long way from the hundred and thirty he needed to graduate. But graduation wasn’t the point. The point was to make his ambition known and to memorize the Patrol Guide.

He’d been given his copy of the Patrol Guide on the day he entered the Academy. All six hundred looseleaf pages of it. The Patrol Guide was supposed to provide a step-by-step procedural guide to every situation ever encountered by any cop anywhere. Most patrolmen, on the advice of the older cops who shepherded them through their first months on the job, dumped the Patrol Guide in a closet and learned the shortcuts offered by the veterans. Stanley Moodrow, on the other hand, took sections of the Guide to work with him, studying the mechanics (and the paperwork) of police procedure. The sergeant’s exam was based almost entirely on the Patrol Guide.

Moodrow, his career on course, was just finishing his third year on the job when Sergeant Allen Epstein, newly transferred from Midtown North, found him on the corner of Clinton and Houston Streets.

“Patrolman Moodrow?”

“What’s up, Sarge?”

“Get in for a minute. I wanna talk to you.”

The minute turned into twenty as Epstein explained that he knew all about Moodrow’s amateur boxing career. He pronounced that career glorious, then went on to proclaim the glories of the Manhattan South Police Boxing Club, which, under his expert guidance, would become the finest in the Department.

Moodrow listened politely-Epstein was, after all, a sergeant-but he had less than no interest in the glory derived from beating some cop into submission. Glory was a world title, not a sweaty dance in a high school gym.

“The thing about it,” Moodrow explained, “is that I’m taking classes uptown and I’m studying for the sergeant’s exam. I don’t have the time to train.”

“How much time does it take? We’re not talking about the pros here. These guys are all in the same boat as you.”

Moodrow, hoping to end the discussion, had looked Epstein in the eye. “You go into the ring unprepared, you’re gonna lose. And you’re gonna get hurt. I don’t need that in my life. What’s the point? To prove that I’m tough? I already know I’m tough. Take a look at this.” He’d waved section fifteen of the Patrol Guide in Epstein’s face. “The only thing I’m interested in proving is that I can pass the sergeant’s exam.”

“You won’t be eligible to take the sergeant’s exam for two years. What’s the rush?”

“I wanna be ready when the time comes.”

And that, as far as Stanley Moodrow was concerned, should have been that. But a week later, Epstein was back.

“I see you’re an ambitious cop,” Epstein argued. “You wanna move up in the job. I didn’t know this last week, but I know it now. Ambition is fine with me. I understand it because I also wanna move up in the job. So, lemme ask you one question. You answer it right and I won’t bother you again. The Manhattan South boxing squad competes against other police squads and usually we get a crowd of around three hundred. Who do you think comes to watch?”

“It’s gotta be other cops, right?”

“Yeah, but what kind of cops?”

“Maybe you could just tell me what’s on your mind, Sarge. I’m supposed to report in five minutes.”

“The cops who come to the regular matches aren’t on foot patrol. Foot patrolmen are mostly young. They’ve got families to raise. It’s the older cops who show up. Lieutenants, captains, deputy inspectors. These are cops who can help you, Stanley. Who can put you into squads where you’ll make decent collars. The goddamned chief of detectives is a boxing maniac. The …”

“The chief of detectives?”

“That’s right. Matthew Halloran, himself. He fought in the amateurs twenty-five years ago. Now, he gets his kicks watching cops beat the hell out of each other. You want a gold shield, Stanley? That what you’re lookin’ for?”

“I wouldn’t complain,” Moodrow admitted.

“If you fight and win, especially when we’re up against squads from the firemen or sanitation, the chief of all the detectives in New York City will come to the locker room and shake your hand. My squad’s fighting in Brooklyn next Tuesday. Come and see for yourself.”

Moodrow did go to see for himself and while the chief of detectives was nowhere to be found, Moodrow recognized several dicks from his home precinct, the 7th. The captain of the 7th was there too, screaming for blood or victory, whichever came first.

The essential message was obvious-even if there was no glory, no thrill of victory for Stanley Moodrow, that didn’t mean there was no glory for the spectators. They reacted like they were at Yankee Stadium instead of Saint Regis High School.

Three days later, Moodrow began to train. A month later, he had his first fight and his first victory under his belt. It’d never been easier. His opponents were more concerned with attitude than winning. They stood toe to toe and slugged it out, even when they were conceding fifty pounds and a ten-inch reach advantage. They really didn’t have any choice. The few who tried to keep away from him, to dance and jab their way to victory, were booed and jeered at by their own partisans. And the judges hadn’t looked on their efforts any more kindly than the crowd.

The victories continued to come, one after another, for more than a year. And Moodrow had his sore right hand pumped by dozens of ranking officers, including an Irish inspector named Patrick Cohan with an unmarried daughter named Kathleen. Cohan, without ever saying it, became Stanley Moodrow’s rabbi, bringing him to parties and functions, bragging about his exploits, encouraging his courtship of “my darlin’ Kathleen.”

“I would’ve preferred an Irishman,” Patrick Cohan had explained when Moodrow came to him for permission to ask Kathleen out, “but you’re tough, smart and ambitious. Lord knows, there’s no lack of tough, ambitious cops.