A Piece of the Action

me when you sent me after Jake Leibowitz?”

Greta Bloom sighed. “What you are, Stanley, is a bully. A common neighborhood bully.”

“Not a bully, Greta. A cop. Did you think I was going to pull Melenguez’s killer out of a hat? If that’s what you thought, you should have thought twice, because it turns out that you’re the hat. Ain’t life grand?”

Thirty-two

January 24

Stanley Moodrow sat at his kitchen table, the Daily News in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other, and listened to the sound of water running in the shower. He hadn’t heard that sound in a long time, not unless he was standing in the tub. He could remember a time when he and his parents had made do with a clawfoot bathtub, remember the weekend his father had decided to add a vertical pipe, a showerhead and a support for a plastic curtain. Max Moodrow had begun the job in a grouchy mood. He’d felt that, considering who actually owned the property, improvements were the landlord’s responsibility. Unfortunately, when he’d brought it up while paying his rent, Ed Boyer had laughed in his face.

“You would maybe like to pay more rent, Max? Perhaps you will vote for a politician to repeal rent control?”

Max Moodrow had spent the whole day (a Sunday, his one day off) assembling a Rube Goldberg contraption of his own design. At the very end, he’d turned on the water with a great flourish only to discover that the valve designed to switch the flow of water from the tub to the showerhead wasn’t working. No matter how hard he twisted the tiny lever, water continued to pour into the bathtub.

By the time he’d given up, it was after six and there was no chance of finding an open hardware store in New York City. Not even on the Lower East Side where Jewish merchants (who closed on Saturday for Shabbes) dared the politicians and the police to enforce the Blue Laws.

Initially, Max Moodrow’s profane howls of frustration had filled the air in their apartment. But not for long. Accompanied by his son (“Stanley, from these things you learn how to be a man, not a bum.”), he’d marched down the block to Igor Melenkov’s apartment and confronted the shopowner in his own home. Melenkov had sold him the defective valve and Melenkov had to replace it. No, he couldn’t come by the store tomorrow morning. He had to work tomorrow. And the next day and the next and the next. If he didn’t get the shower going tonight, it’d have to wait the entire week.

Melenkov had shrugged into his coat and marched back to inspect Max Moodrow’s plumbing.

“You are an idiot, Moodrow. Walve is upside-down. Please in future to stick with hammer and nails. Plumbing is for plumbers. Now, give me wrench and pour for me a wodka.”

Stanley Moodrow recalled watching Malenkov unscrew the various fittings. Malenkov had crooked a finger into the freed valve, extracted a wad of soaked paper, then re-fitted the valve with the handle reversed.

The whole process had seemed magical to five-year-old Stanley Moodrow and it was years before he figured it out. He’d watched Malenkov through childhood eyes, absorbing the information without trying to understand it. The valve must have worked either way. All reversing did was move the handle from one side to the other. Malenkov had either left something inside the valve or failed to warn Max about something left by the manufacturer. His father hadn’t done anything wrong.

Moodrow sipped at his coffee and glanced down at the day’s headline: HUGE DOPE RAID TIES IN LUCIANO. The Feds had conducted simultaneous raids in Philly, New York and Washington, netting twenty-one criminals, thirty-five pounds of heroin and fifty-four pounds of opium. More than the total amount seized in the entire country in 1957.

But, of course, that was the point. There were new records every year. Dope seemed to be unstoppable, like a wall of lava flowing down the side of a volcano. The papers liked to blame it on corruption, but the truth was that no one, not the most ardent cop or social reformer, had the faintest idea what to do about it.

“Morning, Stanley, anything interesting happen last night?”

Moodrow looked up to find Kate, wrapped in a large blue towel, standing in the doorway. Her hair glistened in the harsh light of an unshielded ceiling fixture. The light illuminated the spray of freckles across her cheekbones. It sparkled in her small even teeth.

In an instant, before he could take a breath, twenty-one criminals, thirty-five pounds of heroin and fifty-four pounds of opium fled up to newspaper heaven. Moodrow, his attention riveted to the corner of the towel tucked beneath Kate’s arm, lost all capacity to consider social problems.

“Damn,” he whispered.

“Damn what?” Kate was giggling.

“ ‘Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.’ ”

They made love in the living room, Kate on the couch and Moodrow kneeling in front of it. He held her by the hips as he thrust into her. As if she might fly away if he dared to let her go. He watched her closely, the twist of her mouth, the sharply indrawn breath, the tightly closed eyes. Now she was his. The thought came to him as suddenly as the opening credits in a Technicolor movie. The theatre was dark and then … magic.

Half an hour later, they were sitting across from each other at Moodrow’s kitchen table. Moodrow was buttering a piece of toast as Kate ran a brush through her hair.

“Ya know, I heard the honeymoon suite at the Waldorf was overpriced, but I never expected this.” He waved his toast at the four walls.

“What’d you say, Stanley?”

“I made a joke.”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening. Would it still be funny if you said it again?”

“It wasn’t funny the first time. You going to work today?”

“No, I’m not ready to go back. Maybe I’ll stick around to comfort Greta after you get through brutalizing her.”

“Don’t feel sorry for Greta. She knows what she has to do. She knew it before I spelled it out last night. Ask yourself this: if she had such a problem with cops, why’d she come to me in the first place? People in this neighborhood don’t go to the police. They handle their own problems whenever they can. And that includes revenge. Me, I’m a cop and I need cooperation. I get it by giving folks a reason to do what they already know is right.”

“It seemed more like the Battle of the Bulge than gentle persuasion.”

Moodrow reached behind his chair and opened the refrigerator door. He pulled a jar of Welch’s Grape Jelly off the shelf, closing the door as he turned back to the table. “You have to do what you have to do, Kate. If there’s another way to get to Jake Leibowitz, I haven’t thought of it.”

“Stanley, do you mind if I ask you a question?” Kate leaned forward, absently rolling the salt shaker between her palms.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters. It’s very personal, but I’d like to know the answer.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“From what you told me, it’s obvious that somebody’s going to get Jake Leibowitz. The cops, the mob, somebody. Why does it have to be you?”

“Jesus,” Moodrow whispered.

“Jesus has nothing to do with this. Jesus forgave the thief, remember?”

“Yeah, I heard that somewhere. Look, I gotta get down to Greta’s. As for your question, it’s like asking Roy Campanella why he wants to hit a home run. There’re plenty of cops, detectives, too, who’d spend their tours sleeping at their desks if they could. A paycheck and a pension, that’s all they want. Me, I’m not one of them. It’s my game and I want to play it. I want to be the best. Hall of Fame all the way.”

Pat Cohan glanced at his reflection in the mirror and shuddered.

“This calls for a drink,” he said out loud. The drink, a bottle of Bushmill’s, was already in his hand. He looked at it for a second, then drank deeply before turning back to the mirror.