Shoot the Moon

by Joseph T. Klempner

  He only wishes he could think of some way to have it both ways. But he knows that’s asking the impossible. He reaches for the lock and starts dialing the combination.

  By 2:20, he’s back upstairs. With the suitcase.

  Sheridan calls in to the plant a little after 2:30.

  “This is MOUSE,” he says over the radio. “Standing by for instructions.”

  “Where are you, MOUSE?” Abbruzzo asks.

  “I’m at the garage, on Delancey Street. I been checking out the equipment on board. This thing is great!”

  “You break anything, and I’ll have you back in uniform by morning,” Abbruzzo warns him.

  “What?”

  “Don’t break anything!”

  “Say again? Hello? Testing, testing-”

  Just what I need, Abbruzzo thinks, a fuckin’ comedian. He looks around for his Maalox.

  By three o’clock, Kelly’s insistent that it’s time for her to put on her costume. “And you’ve got to put one on, too,” she tells Carmen. “Otherwise, they might see you someday with my Daddy and figure out who I am.”

  Carmen has a little trouble with the likelihood of that particular scenario, but she’s a good sport about it. While Kelly starts changing, Carmen makes a quick run to a stationery store on Eighty-Ninth Street, where they’re selling inexpensive masks. She narrows it down to two but can’t decide which she likes better. Seeing they’re each $3.95, she ends up buying them both - that way, Kelly can decide for her.

  Heading back to the apartment, Carmen remembers Goodman’s suggestion that she call in. She stops at a pay phone, punches in the number for her office.

  “Group Two.” It’s the secretary’s voice.

  “Hi, Emilia, it’s Cruz. Is No Neck around?”

  “No, but they’re on the air. Want me to raise them?”

  “How about the boss?”

  “Lenny? He’s here.”

  “Let me speak to him.”

  “Hold on.”

  After a moment, she hears Lenny Siegel’s voice. “Cruz?”

  “Hi, boss.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At a pay phone, Ninetieth and Lexington.”

  “What’s going on?” he asks her. “You don’t write. You don’t call.”

  “Everything’s fine,” she tells him. “I just don’t get out much, that’s all.”

  “He doesn’t suspect anything?”

  “This guy doesn’t suspect he’s alive,” she assures Siegel. “He’s truly dumber than a stick.”

  “He’s got the goods?”

  “Sure seems that way.”

  “Is he armed?” Siegel asks.

  “You kidding or what? This guy’s a pussycat.”

  “You been stroking his fur, huh?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know - did you ‘consensual-relation’ him, like we said you could?”

  Carmen controls herself, knowing this is no time to lose her cool. “You’ll have to read my report,” she says.

  “Don’t be putting stuff like that in your report,” he tells her. “We’ve cut a few corners in this one already, you know.”

  Tell me about it, she wants to say. Instead, she settles for, “Gotta run.”

  Sheridan radios the plant back a little while later.

  “Had you worried, huh, Ray?”

  “Had me pissed,” Abbruzzo snaps, forgetting for a moment he’s on the air.

  “Sorry about that, chief.”

  “The deal’s going to go down at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Tenth Street,” Abbruzzo says. “It’s not supposed to happen till eight, but I want you set up there ahead a time. So stay by your radio, okay?”

  “Ten-four.”

  Two of the plainclothes cops come back into the plant.

  “Wha’d she do?” Abbruzzo asks them.

  “She went into a card store,” one of the officers says. “Bought somethin’ smallish. Stopped at a phone on the way back, made a call.”

  “You get any overheards?”

  “I walked by her one time,” the other officer says. “I think she was saying, ‘I got the runs.’ Then she hung up.”

  “That’s it? You do a walk-by, and all you hear her say is she’s got the runs?”

  “Sorry. She looked like she was sorta checking for a tail,” the officer says. “I didn’t wanna spook her.”

  “Watch your language there, boy,” says Harry Weems.

  By the time Carmen gets back to the apartment, Kelly’s all witched up in her black hat, cape, and boots. Carmen finds the leftover black satin and cuts herself a piece long enough for a cape. She stands in front of the bathroom mirror, trying to drape it different ways. She couldn’t believe it when she first discovered that Goodman had no full-length mirror anywhere in his apartment. A guy thing, evidently; certainly no woman could ever live like that.

  “Come in here, Kelly,” she calls.

  Kelly pops her head in, witch hat and all.

  In her best crone voice, Carmen says, “Take off that hat, me pretty, and come here. It’s time for a little makeup!”

  The rest of Kelly follows her head into the bathroom. The giggling begins almost immediately.

  Back in the living area, Michael Goodman has begun to pace. Every so often, he stops to take a look at his watch. Last time he looked, it was 3:53.

  “Stop that giggling in there!” he shouts now.

  “Sorry,” Carmen calls. “We’ll be leaving you in peace in ten minutes.”

  “I need to talk to you first,” he says, walking toward the bathroom. The door swings open, but it’s Kelly who slithers out, looking positively scary in black-and-green makeup.

  “My God!” he shrieks, not entirely in pretense.

  Her answering giggles sound very familiar.

  “Could you help me in here a moment, Michael?” Carmen calls from the bathroom. As soon as he joins her, she takes his hand, pulls him over to the bathtub, and turns the water on full force. “Talk,” she says.

  “That’s the same static as last night,” Spike Schwartz says.

  “That’s not static,” Abbruzzo says. “That’s water. Guy’s taking a fuckin’ shower.”

  “Gonna pretty his ass up for jail,” Weems says.

  “One time I locked this broad up in her apartment,” Abbruzzo remembers. “I had her for a rob one, and on top a that, she owed parole five years and change. So she was going. And all she cared about was, could she shave her legs? I said no. So she hiked up her skirt, made me feel the stubble, even started crying. So I said okay, okay, she could shave her legs. Now, I wasn’t going to be a pervert and stand there while she did it, so I waited right outside the bathroom door. Next thing I knew, I heard this crash. I rushed in; she’d fallen down, slit her fuckin’ wrists.”

  “Jesus. She die on you?”

  “Nah, it was one a them little disposable razors. She was lucky to break the skin. But I tell you - ever since then, a prisoner of mine needs to do something, no way. You gotta take a piss? That’s good, ‘cause we’re going to the station house right now, find you a nice little rest room, you can piss all night. Fuck ‘em, I say.”

  Weems says something that sounds to Abbruzzo like “Amen.” Then again, it might have been “Fuck ‘em.”

  “Daddy, they just said on TV that it’s 48 degrees out. Isn’t that warm enough for me to take Pop-Tart?”

  Goodman takes time out from his pacing long enough to look at his daughter. He knows she’s just asked him a question, but he has no idea what it is. He remembers Carmen once telling him he needs to lighten up, become less protective of Kelly.

  “Sure,” he says.

  She runs off, singing, “Yaaaaaay!” as only a six-year-old can. Pop-Tart, apparently sensing that something’s up, heads for the corner of the room and hides behind Larus.

  Goodman resumes his pacing.

  “Daddy, can I take Larus, too? Pop-Tart wants me to.”

  “Isn’t it time for you guys to
leave?” he asks.

  “Can I?”

  “What?”

  “Take him.”

  “No, honey,” Carmen interjects. “We’ll have our hands full as it is.”

  Next thing he knows, they’re standing in front of him, waiting for goodbye kisses. He hugs them each in turn, longer and harder than usual, he realizes. “Here,” he says to Carmen, reaching into his pocket and pulling out one of Manny’s twenties. “You better take a cab.”

  She thanks him, and they’re out the door, stuff and all. As he watches them head for the stairs, Goodman suddenly notices they’ve got Pop-Tart with them. He can’t believe it. He opens his mouth to object, but the door closes, and they’re gone.

  The apartment suddenly seems eerily quiet. Goodman looks at his watch. 4:20.

  “There go the kid and the girlfriend,” Weems says, watching them through binoculars. “Think we oughta put somebody on them?”

  “Nah,” says Ray Abbruzzo, “let ‘em go. We wanna concentrate our manpower on the Mole.”

  * * *

  At 1702, Sheridan pulls the MOUSE over to the curb at Tenth Street, just west of Sixth Avenue and right past a row of orange cones that someone’s put down. Sheridan’s found the perfect parking spot: the first car from the corner, with the back of the van closer to the intersection. That way, the observation ports - which from outside the vehicle appear to be nothing more than side and rear reflectors - have an unobstructed view of the corner.

  Sheridan’s about to slide open the partition separating the cab from the rear of the van - so that he can join Riley and the other two men already back there - when there’s a knock on the driver’s side window.

  “No standin’ here, pal,” a uniformed officer tells him.

  “I’m on the job,” Sheridan tells him before reaching for the pocket his shield is in. He remembers the first time he did that, some years back. He’d reached for his pocket without first saying the magic words. The cop - turned out to be a rookie, a probationary officer just two weeks out of the Academy - had pulled his weapon and dropped into a combat position, ready to blow Sheridan’s head off.

  “How long you gonna be?” the officer asks him.

  “Not long,” Sheridan tells him. Fuck him, he thinks. You want to write me a ticket? Write me a ticket. The lieutenant’ll take care of you. He climbs into the back, sliding the partition closed behind him and leaving the van looking empty and unremarkable to anyone passing by.

  From the back, Riley radios the plant. “MOUSE to Geranium,” he says into the microphone. Someone’s decided you shouldn’t say the word plant over the air. Everything’s gotta have a code word.

  “Go ahead, MOUSE.”

  Riley recognizes Abbruzzo’s voice. “We’re on the set,” he announces.

  “Can you see good?”

  “Ray, if Barbie walks by, we’re gonna be able to see the hairs on her little-”

  “Never mind. You got a legal spot there, where nobody’s gonna bother you?”

  “The best.”

  “Okay,” Abbruzzo says. “Stand by. We’ll keep you guys posted.”

  “Ten-four.”

  If there’s anything cops know how to do, it’s stand by. “Hey, you guys got any food in here?” Sheridan asks.

  It turns out there’s not that much: a dozen doughnuts, four packs of Twinkies, a bag of potato chips, a box of pretzels, some Slim Jims, and a pint of something that’s either potato salad or cottage cheese - no one seems too sure. In the process of taking inventory, however, everybody’s too busy to notice the woman, the short witch, and the cat getting out of a cab right next to them and heading for the entrance of the corner building.

  It’s 7:15 and dark by the time Goodman leaves his apartment. The suitcase is heavy and difficult to maneuver going down the stairs, and by the time he reaches the ground floor, he’s sweating. He realizes he should have worn his windbreaker instead of his old navy survival jacket. Its bright orange color makes it a good thing to have on if you’re knocked overboard, but its quilted lining makes it much too heavy for the weather. He didn’t realize how much it had warmed up. He wishes someone had told him.

  He walks to the corner, shifting the suitcase from one hand to the other every twenty feet or so. He squints his eyes against the headlights coming down Lexington, searching for an empty taxi.

  “He’s moving! He’s moving!” Weems reports, binoculars following every step Goodman takes. “And he’s got a big suitcase. Looks like it’s a load.”

  “Waters! Gleason!” Abbruzzo shouts. “You guys take him on foot. But don’t let him make you - we already know where he’s going.” The two plainclothes officers are out the door.

  “We could take him right now, Ray,” Weems says. “That suitcase has got the shit in it, or my name isn’t Harry.”

  “No, no,” Abbruzzo says. “We wanna take him down at the set, soon as he hands it over to this Vinnie guy. That way, we got ‘em both.”

  “Well, don’t let’s lose him.”

  “Don’t worry,” Abbruzzo says. Then he hits the Send button on the radio. “Geranium to all field units,” he says. “The Mole has left the burrow. He’s headed toward Lexington. And he’s dirty as can be. Repeat, the Mole has left the burrow.”

  “This is Charlie car,” a voice comes back. “He looks like he’s trying to flag down a cab on the corner of Ninety-second and Lex. We’re on him.”

  “Baker car here,” comes another voice. “We got him in our sights from the west. We’ll fall in behind you, Charlie.”

  “Ten-four, Baker.”

  * * *

  Cabs keep passing by, but all of them are occupied. Goodman can’t imagine why, until some kids in costumes walk by him. It’s Halloween, he remembers. People are going trick-or-treating, heading to parties.

  Finally, he gives up. Picking up the suitcase, he takes a deep breath and begins the six-block walk to Eighty-Sixth Street.

  “He’s heading downtown,” a voice crackles over the radio. “On foot.”

  “Whozat? Whozat?” Abbruzzo shouts into the microphone.

  “Charlie car, sir,” comes the reply. “You got him, Charlie?”

  “Affirmative. My partner’s behind him on foot. I’m hanging back, just in case he grows wheels.”

  “How ‘bout you, Baker?” Abbruzzo asks.

  “Same thing. And I can see Waters and Gleason across the street. They’re on him, too.”

  “Good,” Abbruzzo says. “Don’t lose him, but don’t get burned, either.”

  Despite changing hands frequently, Goodman has to stop walking altogether three times to catch his breath. The twin green globes that mark the entrance to the subway are a welcome sight when he finally spots them.

  “This is Baker car. He’s going down into the subway.”

  Abbruzzo can hear the surprise in the voice. Drug dealers drive cars; they hire limos; they take cabs. They never take the subway. “That’s okay; that’s okay,” he says. “He’s a tricky one. Probably trying to shake you.”

  “Not gonna happen,” Baker reports. “We got four guys on foot, heading down after him.”

  “Good,” says Abbruzzo. “You and Charlie car head for the set, Sixth Avenue and Tenth Street. Repeat, Sixth Avenue and Tenth Street. You copy?”

  A “Ten-four” comes back over the air in duplicate.

  “You know what, Harry?”

  “What, Ray?”

  “We’re gonna get this fucker.”

  “I hope so,” Weems says. “I got kids, you know.”

  Goodman takes the first downtown train that arrives on the platform, a number 5. It’s crowded, and he has to stand. He straddles the suitcase, looking around for a seat that’s likely to open up. There are people in costume on the train, young people mostly. There are clowns and ghouls and devils. Some are fully costumed; others wear masks and street clothes. Goodman has a vague sensation of being in a scene from a Fellini movie.

  No seats open up at Fifty-Ninth Street, but one toward the mi
ddle of the car does at Forty-second. He lifts his suitcase and heads that way, even as he sees a man coming from the opposite direction who’s got a good two steps on him and no luggage to weigh him down. Goodman slows down, determined to be a good loser about it. But at the last moment, the guy surprises him by pulling up and graciously gesturing to Goodman that he should take the seat.

  Goodman does take it, offering warm thanks.

  It’s only after the man tips his hat, turns away, and heads for the next car that it occurs to Goodman that there was something very familiar-looking about him.

  “Boy, that was close,” Lee Waters tells his partner, George Gleason. They both look through the glass doors, toward where Michael Goodman sits in the next car.

  “He make you?” Gleason asks.

  “Not a chance,” Waters assures him. “This hat a mine fooled him.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure.”

  Goodman’s pretty sure the man is one of those he’s noticed following him over the course of the last couple of days. He wonders if the guy’s DEA, or NYPD, or what. If he’s one of the good guys or one of the bad guys. He ends up deciding he must be a city cop. He’s too clean-cut-looking to be a bad guy, he figures, and the feds should be better at following someone than that. Then again, he realizes he’s just making a guess.

  It occurs to him that it would be nice if the rest of the decisions he makes this evening are based on something just a bit more substantial than guesswork.

  He gets off at Fourteenth Street, lugging the suitcase onto the platform and looking around for signs. Before leaving home, Goodman carefully studied the subway map in the front of his Manhattan Yellow Pages. The most direct course seemed to be the L to Sixth Avenue, but he sees no sign of it. He notices that the man with the hat has gotten off also, and that he and a friend of his seem to be having some difficulty getting their bearings, too.

  The L turns out to be down the end of a long corridor, and Goodman suddenly feels alone and vulnerable. Without even turning around, he’s begun to be able to sense that he’s being followed, and he knows that’s the case now. If they were to decide to jump him right here - and arrest him, steal his drugs, slit his throat, or whatever - there’s absolutely nothing he could do about it. So he just keeps walking.