Shoot the Moon

by Joseph T. Klempner

  Abbruzzo spots a lanky black kid who looks familiar, which is not altogether unusual.

  “Hey,” he says to Riley, “isn’t that Larry Lookout?”

  Riley looks. “Yeah,” he says, “Syracuse.” Even though today the kid’s wearing a different jacket.

  “Yo!” Abbruzzo calls out, just loud enough for the kid to look over. As soon as he has the kid’s attention, he motions him to follow them into the building.

  “Hey, kid,” Abbruzzo says as soon as they’re off the street. “Howya doing?”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s your name again? Bobby?”

  “Robbie.”

  “Right, Robbie McCray.”

  “I didn’t do nothin’,” Robbie tells them. “I’m clean.”

  Abbruzzo laughs. “Sure you are,” he says. “We got no beef with you, Robbie. It’s your friend Russell we’re looking for.”

  “Yeah, we think maybe he jerked us off about that white guy,” says Riley. To illustrate the phrase “jerked off,” he makes an up-and-down movement with his fist in the area above his crotch.

  “That place was clean as a whistle,” Abbruzzo says. “Guy turns out to be a fucking accountant.”

  Robbie eyes both detectives in turn, as though they’re jerking him off, before saying, “Dint you hear?”

  “Hear?” Riley echoes.

  “Russell got popped,” Robbie says. “Caught hisself a coupla caps downtown.” Manhattan is downtown to anyone who lives in the Bronx, even though there are parts of Manhattan that are farther north than parts of the Bronx.

  “When?”

  “Monday night.” This means any time from dark to nine o’clock Tuesday morning.

  “Where?”

  “Wayova on the Wesside, by the riva. Roun twenny-fif.” Which, of course, is 125th Street.

  “No shit,” says Abbruzzo.

  Later, upstairs in the OP, Abbruzzo has a thought. Wiping the coffee from his chin, he shares his thought with Riley. “The way I figure it, maybe it was there after all,” he says.

  “It?”

  “The Mole’s stash,” Abbruzzo says. “Or maybe not. Maybe he keeps it somewhere else. Either way, someone seems to have got pretty pissed off at Russell for putting us onto him.”

  “Or,” Riley says, “somebody wasted Russell for something completely different. Like maybe he dissed the wrong guy. Or owed some fucker twenty cents and was late payin’ it back.”

  “Maybe,” Abbruzzo says. “Remind me to check with somebody in the Twenty-sixth. Find out who caught the homicide, see what the word is on the street.” He sips his coffee, dribbles some more down his chin, ignores it. “In the meantime, maybe we oughta take a second look at our friend the Mole.” The coffee drips from the tip of his chin onto the front of his shirt.

  Halfway home, Goodman realizes that he hasn’t told his daughter about either Carmen or Pop-Tart. He figures she’s had enough surprises lately.

  “Hey, angel,” he calls out, since she’s perched atop his shoulders, holding onto his head for balance. “I’ve got a couple of guests staying with me. They’re both looking forward to meeting you.”

  “What kind of guests?”

  He immediately opts for cowardice. “Well, one’s very short, and he’s got whiskers-”

  “Whiskers?” She laughs.

  “Whiskers.”

  “How many legs does he have?”

  “Let me see,” Goodman says, pretending to search his memory. “One . . . two . . . three . . . four!”

  “Does he by any chance go ‘meow’?”

  “I think he may when he’s a little older. Right now, he’s only up to ‘mew.’“

  “You have a kitten, Daddy?”

  “How come you’re so smart, angel?”

  “‘Cause you gave me giant hints.”

  He shifts Larus from one hand to the other.

  “Who’s the other guest?” she asks excitedly. “Does he go ‘bowwow’?”

  “No, and he’s a she.”

  That stops her, but only for a moment. “What does she say?”

  “Oh, she says things like ‘Hello’ and ‘How are you?’ and ‘Nice to meet you.’“

  “She must be a parrot,” Kelly announces.

  When they reach his building, Goodman unlocks the downstairs door and, to announce their arrival, buzzes upstairs on the intercom. By the time they make it to the fifth floor - Kelly having dismounted and leading the way, Goodman and Larus struggling to keep up - Carmen is waiting at the door.

  “This is Carmen,” Goodman begins the introductions, “and this-”

  “And this must be the Ballerina Princess,” beams Carmen, who’s somehow managed to lower herself to her knees and become Kelly’s height.

  “And this is Larus,” Kelly announces, rescuing her mascot before her father can drop him to the floor.

  “Pleased to meet you, Larus.”

  A loud mewing sound, followed by the sudden appearance of black fur on the top of the sofa back, informs them that they’ve slighted someone.

  “And this is Pop-Tart,” Goodman says, completing the protocol. He watches as Kelly goes immediately to the kitten, questioning his name no more than she’s questioned Carmen’s. Pop-Tart responds by allowing his head to be scratched and back to be stroked, but he keeps a wary eye on Larus, with whose species he’s apparently unfamiliar.

  Goodman looks around as he catches his breath. He’s already noticed Carmen’s outfit. Tight-fitting black jeans and a matching T-shirt have replaced his own baggy loaner clothes of the morning, and she’s had her hair cut or done or something, making her look younger and even prettier than before. Now he takes in the rest of his apartment. His sofa’s been turned at a slight angle; his broken coffee table has retreated to the corner, leaving more room to get around. Last night’s empty Chianti bottle has found its way atop the radiator and sprouted a bunch of daisies, and somehow, the place looks cleaner and brighter than it did before.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he notices Carmen looking at him. “Very nice,” he smiles. Her return smile suggests a touch of pride, and perhaps even a trace of relief at his approval. He catches himself wondering if her “couple of days” might not have a renewal clause buried in the fine print, and the thought fills him with an undeniable sense of excitement.

  Goodman’s down to his last $20, but tomorrow’s a payday, so he splurges and orders a pizza. By adding the rest of the lettuce, Carmen manages to reproduce last evening’s salad. They gather around the card table and play family. The usually appetiteless Kelly eats two slices of pizza and shares a third with Pop-Tart, and Goodman dares to believe for a moment that being reunited with him is what she’s needed all along. His eyes suddenly fill, and he quickly brings his paper napkin to them, drying them and blowing his nose in one motion to hide his reaction. But as he lowers his napkin back to his lap, thinking he’s pulled the maneuver off quite nicely, he catches Carmen looking at him. She misses nothing, he sees.

  They watch an old episode of Taxi on TV. When it’s bedtime, Carmen begs for a turn on the floor, but Kelly points out that there are more girls than boys, so the girls get the bed.

  “Looks like you and me on the floor for sure,” Goodman tells Pop-Tart, but he’s wrong again. An hour later, he’s still trying to cushion his hipbone, while the kitten sleeps peacefully on the sofa bed with Carmen, Kelly, and Larus.

  “Looks like they’re out for the count,” Daniel Riley says to Ray Abbruzzo. The two of them have been shivering in a doorway on East Ninety-Second Street, peering up at a fifth-floor window for the last two and a half hours. They had to get special authorization from a lieutenant to skip the evening’s buy-and-bust operation and do this surveillance instead, and now all they have to show for it are a lot of frozen toes and a couple of stiff necks. They step out of the doorway and begin walking east.

  “I can’t figure this fucker out,” Abbruzzo says. “He’s definitely the guy that the Bradford kid met with. We know Bradford was wa
lking around with a pocketful of pure shit. He even told us that the guy he was meeting was his connection. Yet the guy never looks behind him when he walks, and when we turn the place upside down, it’s clean as a whistle.”

  “And now he’s playing Mr. Family Togetherness.” Riley rubs the back of his neck as he walks.

  “We could stand out here playin’ with our dicks for two weeks and not see a fuckin’ thing,” Abbruzzo says. “Maybe it’s time to bring in OCCB, see if they’ll spring for a wiretap.”

  Shortly after midnight, Big Red walks into the Uptown Lounge on 125th Street. He’s recognized by the regulars, with whom he exchanges greetings and high fives.

  “Hey Red. Howsitgoing?”

  “Whassup, man?”

  “Heard you spent a night at the Centre Street Hilton.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Red smiles. “How about that?” He spots the man he’s looking for sitting at a table in the corner, and he heads that way. The man starts to stand, but Big Red motions him to stay put, lowering himself into the empty chair.

  “Lookin’ good, Red. They treat you awright?”

  “Red carpet for the Red Man.”

  “Solid. Good to see you.”

  “So,” Big Red says, leaning forward over the table, “how’d it go?”

  “Like eatin’ pussy,” the other man smiles.

  Big Red leans back and laughs. “You always did have a way with words, Hammer.”

  “So when do you wanna whack that shit up, Red?”

  “I got the girls lined up for ten o’clock tomorrow night. I think we’ll use that apartment up on Gun Hill Road.”

  “That’s cool,” Hammer says. “Want me there?”

  “Yeah, you be there,” Big Red says. “You an’ ol’ Buster Brown.”

  Hammer smiles. “Buster Brown” is street talk for a sawed-off shotgun.

  Thursday morning, Goodman explains to Kelly that he has to go to work later on, so he’ll be dropping her back at her grandmother’s.

  “I want to stay with Carmen,” she says.

  “No,” he tells her.

  “Why not?” she pouts.

  “Because I said so.” Then, remembering his promise to himself never to justify things on such an arbitrary basis, he adds, “You don’t have any other clothes here.” And throws in, “And I’m sure Grandma misses you.” What he’s not ready to tell her is that sleeping in the same bed as Carmen is one thing - after all, he was right there, only six feet away - but he’s not about to leave her in the hands of a virtual stranger for day care.

  Kelly’s pout shows considerable staying power. “Can I come back tonight, to sleep?”

  He softens immediately. “You bet you can.”

  All smiles. Oh, to be six, Goodman thinks, when the whole world’s so very simple. And the thought reminds him of her headaches and the MRI and tomorrow’s spinal tap, and a sudden shudder runs through his body.

  Shortly after eleven, Ray Abbruzzo and Daniel Riley have another meeting with Maggie Kennedy, the assistant district attorney who drew up the search-warrant papers with them.

  “What can I do for you guys?” she asks.

  Abbruzzo answers her question with one of his own. “Remember that guy you got us the search warrant for Saturday night?”

  “The Mole? How could I forget?”

  Abbruzzo nods.

  “How’d it turn out?”

  “Not so hot,” he admits. “But there’ve been a few significant developments since then.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like for one thing, the kid who gave us the information about him turned up dead. Stopped a coupla bullets with his back.”

  Kennedy narrows her eyes a bit. “I thought your tip was from an anonymous caller,” she says.

  “Yeah, it was,” Abbruzzo says. “But through diligent investigation, we found out who the caller was.”

  “Hey, we do our homework,” Riley assures her.

  “Can you connect . . . the Mole - what’s his name again?”

  “Goodman.”

  “Goodman,” she repeats. “Can you connect Goodman to the killing?”

  “Not yet,” Abbruzzo admits, remembering he’s forgotten to call Homicide. “But the word on the street is that he right away suspected it was the kid who dropped a dime on him, and he swore he’d fix him for it.”

  “Meanwhile,” she asks, “where’s Goodman’s stash, if it isn’t in his apartment?”

  Abbruzzo winks and points a finger at her, as if to say she’s onto something there. “Could be anywhere,” he says.

  “They don’t call this guy the Mole for nothing,” Riley reminds her. “He could have this stuff underground, for all we know.”

  “Seems we’re at a dead end,” Abbruzzo says sadly. “Unless-”

  “Unless I can get you a wiretap order,” Kennedy says.

  Abbruzzo smiles broadly. “Now there’s an idea,” he says, as though the thought had never occurred to him.

  At work, Goodman finds the new bookkeeping systems he’s installed greatly simplify things. Manny’s back from whatever kept him away on Monday, and Goodman makes the suggestion that they open a second bank account in order to facilitate segregating deductible expenses from nondeductible ones.

  “You think it’s a good idea?” Manny asks him.

  “Yes, I think so. You see-”

  “Then do it,” Manny says. “Don’t tell me about it; don’t explain it to me. Just do it. You think it’s a good idea, then I think it’s a good idea.”

  Goodman takes it as a vote of confidence and goes back to the books. He’ll continue to work until quarter of five, when Manny will pop in, peel off five twenties from his roll, and tell him to have a good weekend.

  Obtaining a wiretap order - officially designated “an electronic eaves-dropping warrant, pursuant to Article 700 of the Criminal Procedure Law” - is somewhat more difficult than getting a search warrant. Maggie Kennedy works through her lunch hour with Detectives Abbruzzo and Riley, gathering the necessary information she’ll need to prepare three affidavits: one for Abbruzzo, one for herself, and one for her boss, Robert Silbering, the citywide Special Narcotics Prosecutor. The affidavits must contain facts sufficient to establish probable cause that Michael Goodman is the subscriber of a particular telephone number at his residence; that he is engaged in illegal narcotics trafficking; that he uses his phone to call and receive calls from his suppliers, customers, and confederates; and that conventional means of investigation have been tried and proved unlikely to be successful in identifying those suppliers, customers, and confederates, or in learning the whereabouts of Michael Goodman’s narcotics.

  It is this last requirement - sometimes termed the exhaustion requirement - that the legislature has inserted into the law in an attempt to safeguard citizens from the unique intrusiveness of a wiretap, when less invasive law enforcement techniques (such as undercover buys or good, old-fashioned surveillance) might succeed in obtaining the objectives sought. But while the legislature may have acted in good faith in placing what would seem on its face to be a formidable hurdle in the path of overzealous law enforcement personnel, it turns out that police and prosecutors have been quick to learn just what magic words are sufficient to satisfy the requirement, and judges - seeing those magic words in place - are equally quick to rubber-stamp their assertions.

  So, once she’s accepted the assurances of Detectives Abbruzzo and Riley that Michael Goodman, aka the Mole, is indeed using his East Ninety-second Street apartment in furtherance of his heroin trafficking (in spite of the fact that an earlier search of the premises proved negative), and that he’s using his telephone to converse with suppliers, customers, and confederates, Maggie Kennedy turns to the exhaustion requirement.

  “How do we show that conventional investigative techniques are unlikely to succeed?” she asks them, pen in hand.

  “Well,” Abbruzzo sighs, “we’ve tried just about everything. Surveillance is virtually impossible because so many people go in an
d out of the building, it’s impossible to tell which apartment they’re going to.” This one’s a win-win category: If the suspect happened to live in a single-family dwelling, then surveillance would be virtually impossible because the officers’ presence would be too obvious.

  “What else?”

  “The guy’s just too suspicious,” Abbruzzo confesses. “Whenever we put a tail on him, he’s all the time looking around for it. You know - doubling back, circling the block, ducking into buildings. He’s good.”

  “He’s good all right,” Riley chimes in.

  “And the search warrant thing,” Abbruzzo says. “We hear he got tipped off about that, moved his stash just before we hit the place.”

  “How about a buy?” Kennedy suggests.

  “Too dangerous,” says Abbruzzo, lifting the phrase verbatim from the statute. “He’s already killed - or had killed - the person he thinks informed on him. We can’t risk the life of a police officer.”

  “This is one dangerous guy,” Riley agrees.

  “I wish there was some other way,” Abbruzzo says, turning his empty palms upward. “I really do.”

  Kennedy looks over her notes. “Well,” she says after a moment, “I think we’ve got enough here. We can use the dangerousness thing in here, too. Let me get started with the paperwork. Want to come back tomorrow morning, say nine o’clock?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “And fellas,” she says.

  “Yeah?”

  “Give surveillance one more try tonight.”

  They’re out of her office and alone in the elevator before Abbruzzo grabs his crotch and says, “Surveillance this!” They both burst out laughing in one of those rare moments of camaraderie that makes them feel good to be cops.

  Before leaving work, Goodman calls his mother-in-law to tell her he’ll be stopping by to pick up Kelly.