A Piece of the Action

Despite Santo Silesi’s automatic which began to bark, to spit fire, to project small chunks of lead into Izzy’s chest.

“Jesus, Santo, what you done is stupid,” Joe Faci said. “This is no place to be shootin’ nobody.”

Izzy heard that, though he missed Santo’s reply. He couldn’t move and, for a few seconds, he couldn’t remember why. It was very strange. His eyes were closed and somebody was kicking him. They were forcing him onto the floor of the car, covering him with an overcoat. He felt shoes on his back, then remembered what had happened. Oh shit, he thought, I’ve been shot. Oh shit, I’m bleeding. Oh shit, I’m dead.

What saved Moodrow’s butt, in the end, was simple habit, a series of reflexes built up over years of practice. But what got him into trouble was simple inexperience. Moodrow spent eight hours sitting in his car on the south side of Houston Street. It was his first stakeout and, all things being equal, he would have had a veteran detective sitting next to him. He would have had a guide to warn him against falling into a mental state that was closer to sleepwalking than alert and ready.

Eight hours in the rain, Moodrow supposed, thinking about it later, is enough to blur anyone’s concentration. Eight hours peering through the drops at a tiny park jammed between twelve-story brick buildings. What it did was get your mind to drifting, to thinking about what you’d spent the last couple of days trying not to think about. Which was Kate Cohan.

There was a basic unfairness in his relationship with Kate that went beyond the sins of her father. The simple fact was that if he wanted to marry her, to spend his life in her company, he was going to have to leave his world and enter hers. The reverse, he’d come to think, could never happen. In fact, whenever he tried to imagine Kate in her fox coat strolling down Avenue C, he was tempted to laugh out loud.

And the change would involve much more than packing a suitcase and moving the twenty miles from the Lower East Side to suburban Bayside. He’d have to leave his attitudes behind, have to build up an entirely different way of addressing the world. And their children would never understand. No more than Kate understood. Bayside, as far as Moodrow could make out, didn’t have a history at all. It was a place to go after you made it. After you escaped.

What it is, Moodrow thought, is that the suburbs mean the same thing to the second generation that the Statue of Liberty meant to the first. And maybe that’s what Kate Cohan means to me. Maybe all I want to do is get away from the junkies and the projects and the rotting tenements. Maybe I’m watching all the kids I grew up with stuff their crap into moving vans and I think I’m being left behind.

He closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating until Kate’s image, nearly solid, floated behind his eyes. For some reason, she was smiling that same quick smile that flashed across her face whenever he said something wicked. The spray of freckles running across the bridge of her nose was especially vivid, a burnt-orange contrast to her innocent blue eyes.

Innocence. That was another thing. The women who’d come in and out of his life before he’d met Kate had been any number of things, but never innocent. They’d all seen too much, grown up too fast. Some would stand beside you in a bar fight. Others would sell you out in a hot flash. Yet, for all their variety, they never represented anything more than aspects of a world he already knew. A world that, waiting in the rain, wishing he smoked cigarettes so he’d have some way of passing the time, didn’t seem all that bad to him. There was something about sitting in Greta’s apartment and hearing the living history of the neighborhood (his neighborhood) that yanked at him like a magnet grabbing a paperclip.

He spent a moment trying to put a name to that attraction. Pride? No, it wasn’t pride. He was aware of the flaws, of the poverty and the violence, the alkies sleeping in doorways on the Bowery, the junkies looking for something to steal, the prostitutes (most often junkies themselves) parading up and down 3rd Avenue. Maybe there wasn’t a name for what he was feeling. Maybe he was just looking for something to hang onto. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

It was nearly eight o’clock when he gave it up. The junkies had come and gone, apparently unsatisfied. Which, Moodrow supposed, was better than having a dealer other than Santo show up to service them. Tomorrow was another, hopefully dry, day.

There was no place to park in front of his building, a fact which came as no great surprise to Stanley Moodrow. The space he eventually found, nearly three blocks away, was par for the course. He pulled the key, turned up the collar of his overcoat and stepped out of the Ford. The streets were deserted and he let his thoughts drift from Santo to Kate to a mystery witness somewhere up in Hell’s Kitchen. Epstein had urged him to be patient. Father Sam, too. Still, he’d begun the day with every expectation of finding the killers of Luis Melenguez.

What I am, he thought, is a rookie. An amateur. What I should be …

He didn’t notice the man behind him until the bat was actually in motion. Even then, he had no more than a split second to react. Not enough time to think, much less plan a response. He did what any experienced fighter would do, what every trainer from Sam Berrigan to Allen Epstein had taught him to do-he pulled his shoulder up to protect the side of his face. The bat struck the point of his shoulder, then clipped the top of his head.

Damn, he thought, I’m bleeding. I don’t want to bleed anymore. I’m through with that.

He was facing his attacker, now, though he couldn’t remember turning around. He watched the bat drift away, then begin its arc. Once again, he reacted instinctively. Instead of pulling his head away, he stepped forward and the bat curled over his shoulder, thumping harmlessly against his back. Moodrow grabbed his assailant’s throat with one hand, then began to drive his fist into the man’s face. He didn’t stop until bat and man were lying motionless on the sidewalk.

The first thing Moodrow thought was that the man was dead and he, Moodrow, was going to spend all night in the precinct filing reports and being interviewed. Dropping to one knee, he turned the man over and began to search for a pulse. He was still searching when the man began to moan and tried to sit up.

“Stay on the ground,” Moodrow growled. “Don’t move your hands. I’m gonna frisk you and if your hands move while I’m doin’ it, I’m gonna slow ’em down by smashing your face into the sidewalk.”

The search turned up nothing, neither weapon nor identification. Moodrow put his hand up to the right side of his scalp. The blood was still flowing, a thin trickle that mixed easily with the rain soaking his shirt collar.

“You better have a good story,” Moodrow said. He rolled the man onto his stomach and cuffed him tightly. Very tightly.

“You’re gonna cut off my circulation. I’ll lose my hands.”

“Guess that means you won’t be swinging any more baseball bats. You got a name?”

Nothing. Moodrow’s attacker spit up a wad of blood-soaked phlegm, then turned his eyes to the ground.

“C’mon, pal, you ain’t gettin’ out of this without some answers. Gimme a name. Yours or somebody else’s.”

“Joe Jones,” the man said without looking up.

Moodrow spun Joe Jones around and drove his right fist in the left side of Joe Jones’s lower back. He was rewarded with a scream.

“Ever piss blood, Joe? Lemme tell ya, the first time it happens, it really shakes you up. And it can do a lot of long-term damage.” Moodrow smashed his fist into Joe Jones’s ribs. “When you crack a rib, on the other hand, all the damage is done on impact. If, God forbid, the rib breaks up, you gotta worry about splinters cutting into the lung. That can make the lung collapse, which, believe me, leads to all kinds of complications. Are you listening?”

Moodrow’s breathless soliloquy was interrupted by the sound of a car horn. He turned, reaching for his gun with one hand while he held onto Mister Jones with the other.

“Take it easy, Stanley. It’s me, Samuelson. What’s going on here?”

It took Moodrow a moment to realize that “Samuelson” was Detective Paul Samuelson. He was accompanied by a second detective, a man unknown to Moodrow.

“What’re you doing here?”

“We’re working, whatta ya think? Comin’ back from a homicide on 14th Street. Figured to make a stop on First Avenue for coffee when we heard this guy scream. What’s goin’ on here? You’re bleedin’.”

“Well, that’s what happens when you get hit on the head with a Louisville Slugger. You bleed.” He put his hand up to his scalp. The bleeding had slowed considerably. Slowed, but not stopped.

“You’re gonna have to get that sewn up. Why don’t you give me the basics? I’ll take the bastard over to the house and book him. Tomorrow morning, you can drop by the Seventh and do the paperwork.”

“The basics are this asshole attacked me from behind and I punched his face in. Meanwhile, he’s not carrying