A Piece of the Action

myself, is give you the sketch and let you go through the books. It can’t hurt if Patero and Cohan think I’m sitting on my hands. If they think I’m scared shitless.”

“All right, Stanley. But one piece of advice before you hit the bricks. You’re gonna need friends if you expect to get through this in one piece. And I’m in a much better position to know who to trust. I’ve been living with the bullshit for a long time. If I tell you somebody’s okay, they’re okay.”

“Yeah? You sayin’ you wanna come out in the open on this? You wanna put your name right next to mine on Inspector Pat Cohan’s shit list?”

“If you’re asking me to step into your shoes, the answer is ‘go fuck yourself.’ What you have to realize is that you can’t do it yourself. Once you get that tiny little thought firmly planted in your tiny little brain, you’ll stop taking so many punches.”

Moodrow, stepping out onto the street, looked up at an overcast sky and shook his head. After weeks of freezing days and below-freezing nights, it was finally warming up. That was the good news. The bad news was that it’d be raining by noon. And it’d probably keep raining until strong Canadian winds pushed the soup back toward Virginia where it belonged.

It was eight o’clock in the morning and Moodrow was headed for Berrigan’s, an amateur boxing gym on Allen Street that had to work around school schedules in order to train its aspiring champions. The gym was run by Father Samuel Berrigan, a no-nonsense Catholic priest who used early-morning workouts as a way to separate the serious from the merely foolish. He lectured his boys constantly, insisting that the most important factor in a fighter’s career was simple desire. Stanley Moodrow had been his favorite example.

“He’s slow. He’s ugly. He fights with his face. Stanley has no right to win, but he wins anyway. That’s because he wants to win. He desires victory.”

By the time Moodrow ran into a fighter with equal desire and far more talent, he’d moved through several trainers, leaving Father Sam far behind.

The gym was open and functioning when Moodrow walked through the door. There were fighters on both speed bags, sharp middleweights competing with each other to make the bag dance. Moodrow watched them for a minute, then drifted over to a boxing ring in the center of the gym. The two kids sparring inside couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds, but they were giving it all they had. The shorter of the two, stocky and short-armed, was bobbing and weaving frantically. The other kid was firing one jab after another, following each jab with a crisp left hook or a straight right hand. The only problem was that the short kid didn’t know how to close the space between himself and his opponent, while the taller kid didn’t have the timing to hit a moving target.

“I do believe those boys’re doin’ the lindy hop. There’s no way you could call it boxing.” Father Sam was short and bow-legged. He’d been a fighter before he’d turned to the priesthood and his rapport with the tough, street-wise boys of the Lower East Side was legendary. His gym was open to everyone and many a Jewish father had dragged his troubled son through Father Sam’s door.

“I can remember when you trained ’em to be a lot meaner,” Moodrow said, turning away from the ring.

“You can’t teach mean, Stanley. Can’t teach brave, either. I saw your last fight.”

“Against the fireman?”

“Yeah. Pure desire. It made me proud. What’re you doin’ here. You slummin’?”

“I’m lookin’ for somebody.”

“One of my boys?”

“No.” Moodrow fished Santo’s sketch out of his jacket pocket and passed it to the priest. “This guy’s dealing dope somewhere in the neighborhood, probably out of the projects by Avenue D.”

“What’d he do, kill somebody?”

“Dope dealing’s not enough?”

“It’s enough, Stanley. It’s enough to mess up more than one of my boys. Only I didn’t think you cops gave a damn. Being as they’re dealin’ it right out in the open.”

“Look, Father, I can’t speak for the entire Department. No more than you can speak for Cus D’Amato.” Cus D’Amato, Floyd Patterson’s manager, refused to let the champion fight serious contenders, preferring rank amateurs and club fighters. The sportswriters never lost an opportunity to rake him over the coals. “But you’ve known me for a long time, so you can believe me when I tell you that the people I’m after need to be taken off the street. Permanently.”

The priest took Moodrow’s arm and pulled him to one side of the gym. “Now, Stanley, I know you’re talkin’ justice here, but it seems more like a favor to me. Of course, people in the community should be doin’ favors for each other. It’s the neighborly thing, right? Now, I’ve got this Jewish boy. Joseph is his name. Joseph Green. The boy got himself in a little trouble. Drinkin’ is what it was. He got so drunk, he smacked a cop.”

“The cop was in uniform?”

“ ’Fraid so.” The priest shrugged. “Joey’s not a bad kid. Stupid, yes, but not really bad.”

“Is he charged with assaulting a police officer?”

“Yeah, that’s it. They’re gonna give the boy hard time if he goes to court and loses. The boy doesn’t deserve hard time just for smackin’ somebody. I don’t care if it was a cop. People down here smack each other all the time.”

“Was the cop hurt bad?”

“Now, that’s the thing. Joey knocked the cop down and he hit his head on the sidewalk. I understand there were some stitches involved.”

“What’s the kid’s name again?”

“Joe Green.”

“Okay, Father. I’ll ask around, find out what’s happening. Maybe I know the cop.”

“Go see the boy, Stanley. Talk to him. He’s not a bad kid. Just stupid, like I said.”

“I’ll do what I can, but don’t expect miracles. If he’s got a record, he’s goin’ away.” Moodrow held up Santo Silesi’s picture. “You know this guy or not?”

“Well,” the priest scratched his head, then smiled, “I don’t believe he shows up for the six-thirty Mass at St. Ann’s.”

“This is serious, Father. If you don’t wanna bother, don’t waste my time.”

“Patience, Stanley. Isn’t that what I taught you? Slow fighters have to be patient. Now, it happens there’s a boy changing up in the locker room named Henry Sanchez. He lives in those projects. If you think you can refrain from callin’ him ‘Chico,’ we could ask him to look at your picture.”

“I’ll do my best.”

They walked through the gym, Father Sam leading the way, to a small locker room at the far end of the building. Henry Sanchez was pulling on his shoes when they entered the room. He looked up, glanced at Moodrow, then turned to his trainer.

“Wha’s up, Father.”

“Give me the picture,” the priest said, pulling it out of Moodrow’s hand. “You recognize this man, Henry?”

Sanchez took his time studying the sketch, then handed it back to his trainer. “Why you wanna know?”

“It has nothing to do with me,” Father Sam said. “This here’s Stanley Moodrow. He used to fight for me. Now, he’s a police officer. Stanley’s looking for the man in that picture. Says that man’s dealing dope in the projects.”

“Tha’s funny,” Sanchez said, staring straight up at Moodrow, “I been thinkin’ the cops don’ arres’ no dealers. The headknockers only arres’ the junkies.”

“Now, that’s your whole problem, Sanchez. That’s why you can’t learn to hook off the jab. You think you know all there is to know. I’m tellin’ you that Stanley’s on the up and up.”

“I still wanna know is he gon’ to arres’ this man?”

“Look, Henry,” Moodrow interrupted, “There was a killing on Pitt Street the day after Christmas. The victim’s name was Luis Melenguez. The man in the sketch, his first name is Santo, knows who the killers are. If I find Santo, I’ll find the killers. Simple as that.”

Sanchez took a minute to think it over. “Tha’s the name,” he finally said. “Santo. Every day he’s bringin’ dope