She bit his ear, a quick, sharp bite. “We are too old.”
“Sure, much too old. So what I’ll do is, I’ll get enough clothes out of my apartment and we’ll try it for two weeks.”
“Then what?”
“Who the fuck knows?” Moodrow groaned. “Maybe we’ll go to Holland. For the tulips.”
“Neptune, more likely,” Rita said, “For the atmosphere.”
On Tuesday morning, while Moodrow returned to work, Rita Melengic put her winnings in the bank—$8,786—in a money-market fund. Then, at noon, when she knew it would be busy and she, as an experienced waitress, would be most valued, she went back to the Killarney Harp on Houston Street and confronted Ramon Iglesia, the man who’d fired her. Not surprisingly, he broke into a huge smile, his anger long ago dissipated, and they spent the next hour having coffee and catching up on neighborhood gossip. Ramon had a new girlfriend, but she was still running around with her ex-lover though she, Irma, swore they were not going to bed anymore.
“But I heard she went up to his apartment,” Ramon cried. “My friend told me she was up there for two hours. How could a woman go to a man’s apartment that long if she wasn’t gonna let him do it? Not for no two hours, because if she didn’t give him no ass, he wouldn’t let her stay there. Not for no two hours.”
Rita gave him a long look, reaching for what he wanted to hear. She finally decided that he was in love with Irma and so she, Rita, would try to reassure him. “Haven’t you ever had a woman in your apartment without going to bed with her?”
“Not without trying.” He gave her an affronted look, drawing in an already weak chin. “Besides,” he waved a finger in victory. “They already been lovers for three years. He ain’t gonna go in a room alone with her for no two hours if she don’t give him nothin’.”
“Well, maybe there was someone else there. Did you ask her?”
Ramon perked up briefly, then allowed the anger to rise back into his hunched shoulders. “My friend told me she was alone with him.”
“Was your friend inside? Don’t be so quick to judge. You didn’t ask the poor girl. Give her a chance, for Christ’s sake. Anyway, I’m gonna let Stanley move in with me.”
Ramon’s aspect changed immediately, brightening until he fairly glowed. He reached out to squeeze her fingers gently. “That’s so good to hear. You too beautiful to live alone.” He looked around the room, noting the customers and waitresses engaged in their noon-time dance. “Hey girls,” he called out over the noise of the bar. “Hey, Louisa, Rosa, Kathy. Come over here.” And when they arrived he continued, explaining Rita’s good fortune which began to seem better and better to her as the girls petted and kissed her. They were, all of them, veterans of the wars between men and women. Kathy and Rosa were married, unhappily, while Louisa, five-years divorced, merely screwed around, also unhappily. For them, any change, especially when viewed from a distance, had to be for the better. But it wasn’t their opinions that mattered to Rita anyway; it was their obvious feeling for her, their warmth and affection. Then she told them about her winnings in Atlantic City and they fell back, awed and jealous. In their world, men and women were always coming together and falling apart, while cash was inevitably in short supply.
“What are you gonna do with it?” Louisa asked.
“Well I put it in the bank this morning, but I was thinking of having a party here on Saturday night after we close. I mean, if I get my job back.” She gave Ramon a sidelong glance.
“No problem,” he said. “I already been sending people around looking for you. But I got to be careful. I can’t come myself, because your boyfriend is a cop. Jesus,” he paused to wipe his forehead, a purely symbolic gesture of submission, “for awhile I was afraid you might send him after me. He’s the biggest damn cop I ever saw.”
On the Tuesday morning following the assault on the Robert Wagner Homes, Moodrow, relieved of any special detail, also returned to work, and picked up the thread of a large fencing operation, an ongoing investigation he and several other detectives had been pursuing for nearly three months. He worked at his desk in the detectives’ room, a place he avoided as much as possible, not because he disliked his fellow detectives, but because he hated the noise—the cops yelling to each other across the room, the assorted criminals and complainants, some clearly psychotic, screaming their innocence to whomever would listen, and, most of all, the endless ringing of the telephones.
Still, he put in his time conscientiously, spending most of the morning on the hated telephone. Other detectives, involved in the same case, approached his desk from time to time. The team was looking for an informant who could introduce them to the fence, an Italian named Angelo Girardi, but after two hours of comparing notes and calling in favors, they were reduced to considering the possibility of bringing in an undercover cop from some outer precinct. All knew it would take months for a new man to penetrate the operation, and nobody was satisfied, when Moodrow, at twelve o’clock, pushed his chair away from the desk.
“Fuck it,” he declared earnestly. “I’m gonna go have lunch and see if Rita got her job back. Take about an hour.” He tossed some papers on his desk, walked out into the dayroom, shrugged into his coat and was halfway out the door when the duty sergeant looked up from his desk, peering over his bifocals.
“Hey, Stanley,” he called out over the noise of the detectives’ room. “The captain wants to see you.”
“Well, for shit sake, Harry, why didn’t you tell me before I got dressed?”
Clearly offended, Harry sniffed once, then buried himself in the stack of paperwork that lay on his desk, the same paperwork he’d been staring at since nine o’clock in the morning.
Helpless, Moodrow threw off his overcoat and trudged down the corridor toward the captain’s office. Without thinking, he opened the door as he had a thousand times before, only this time Epstein’s voice rang out before he was in the room.
“Don’t you believe in knocking, Sergeant?” the captain asked.
Moodrow looked around Epstein’s office, noting Agents Higgins and Bradley as well as a New York deputy inspector named Sean Flynn, a fourth generation Irish cop. He nearly laughed aloud, imagining the kind of pressure that could make an old-time Fed-hater like Flynn accompany two FBI agents into a precinct house. Nevertheless, in spite of his amusement, he started to back out of the room, understanding both that he was in some sort of trouble and that the captain needed to put on a show.
“Forget about it,” Epstein said, just enough resignation in his voice to show he was playing his part. “You’re in now. Why don’t you take a seat.”
Moodrow did as he was told, sitting absolutely immobile in a chair across from Higgins and Bradley.
“This is Deputy Inspector Flynn,” Epstein said.
The deputy nodded once. “We’ve met before, Captain,” he said crisply. “I had the honor of presenting the sergeant with a commendation about six months ago. For bravery, if I recall. A tenement fire.”
“How you been, Inspector?” Moodrow asked.
“Still pushing, Sergeant. Thanks be to Jesus.”
“Well,” Bradley interrupted. He knew the dialogue was meant to annoy him. A message of solidarity from the troops. “We’ve only got a few minutes, so let’s get right down to business.” He addressed Moodrow directly. “First, we’d like to know how you’re doing on the Chadwick case. Are you close to making an arrest?”
Moodrow looked at Epstein, received a slight nod, then spoke out. “We closed it out. Nothing but dead ends. Nothing solid.”
“Then how about something liquid?” Bradley asked, flashing a smile as elegant as his pin-striped suit.
“Whattaya gonna do, bust my fuckin’ balls?” Moodrow half rose in his seat.
“Now just one minute,” Flynn said calmly. “As long as I’m in this room, by Jesus, Mary and all that’s holy, we’ll have none of that language. We’re here to review an investigation and that’s just what we’re going to do.”
&nbs
p; Moodrow, recalling, vaguely, that Flynn was president of the Holy Name Society, dropped his head contritely. “I’m sorry, Inspector. You go ahead, Agent Bradley, and I’ll try to answer. Only it seems to me that when I went out to see you in Queens, you weren’t very interested,”
Leonora Higgins spoke out quickly. “Sergeant Moodrow,” she began, “we now feel there’s some possibility that the same group responsible for the death of Ronald Chadwick is presently operating as the American Red Army. It’s not likely, but it’s possible.”
“Why?” Moodrow asked and, at that moment, using just those instincts Moodrow had spoken about earlier, Leonora Higgins knew that Stanley Moodrow could, if he chose—and that choice was by no means certain—track down the killer of Ronald Chadwick. “Tell me what’s changed enough so you think that now there’s a connection where there wasn’t one a couple of weeks ago.”
Bradley, angry, leaned forward. “We think there may be something you forgot to mention in your last report. Something you missed. Something you want to add.”
Moodrow stared contemptuously at the agent, forcing Inspector Flynn to come between them. “Look here, Sergeant. I’m not blaming you, understand, but I haven’t got time for this sparring. Do you know any more than you put in your report?”
Moodrow looked down at the floor, as if trying to make up his mind about something, then stared straight into Flynn’s eyes. “Inspector, I don’t know what kind of BS dragged these agents away from their computers, but it isn’t Ronald Chadwick. And if you don’t believe me, I’ll give you the whole deal and let you decide for yourself.
“First, Ronald Chadwick is killed and an unspecified amount of money taken from him. Then one of his closest aides, a boy who could have supplied the inside information to make the robbery come off, disappears and later turns up dead in a basement on Clinton Street. Autopsy shows that he was killed before Chadwick. Probably. Finally, this aide’s best buddy, one of twenty-three people I wanted to question, is missing. Did the aide give out the information that set up Chadwick? Did the missing friend, whose street name is Zorba, kill Chadwick and the aide? Whatta ya think the odds are? Twenty to one? Thirty to one? And, if he did, what’s the chance he’s still in New York or that he’s connected in some way to the American Red Army? Another thirty to one? You want me to find this guy? I’ll try my best, but it burns me that when I made my report to Agent Higgins, she practically laughed in my face. Told me there was nothing to it. Now she strolls into my precinct and accuses me of holding back. It’s an insult to the whole department.”
Inspector Flynn threw the two agents the darkest look he knew. They had dragged him in here on a hunch when, in fact, they had no solid evidence at all. The sergeant was clearly not derelict in his duty. He had been thorough and professional in his handling of the case. As a longtime cop, Flynn knew that federal agencies universally embraced the delusion that local police departments were at their beck and call, a kind of law enforcement minor league. “Well, Agent Bradley,” he said, shortly, “I think the sergeant has done his job properly, don’t you? And I’m sure we both commend him on the completeness of his investigation. Now, if there’s nothing else, I’d like to be off.”
Bradley, his voice full of contempt, answered, without even looking at Leonora Higgins. “Perhaps the sergeant could run through the interview he conducted in the course of his investigations.”
“I believe the sergeant,” Flynn responded before Moodrow could speak, “has already told you that you have all the information.”
“Then I have no more questions,” Bradley said, looking over at Leonora. “Anything further, Agent Higgins?”
Leonora didn’t answer, but as she looked toward Moodrow, he caught her eye and winked, tapping his forefinger against his temple and she realized, for the first time, just how big a mistake they’d made in alienating Stanley Moodrow.
10
THE AMERICAN RED ARMY has struck again. On Sunday morning the AMERICAN RED ARMY set off an antipersonnel device at the Robert Wagner Homes, killing two ZIONIST PIGS. Let this be the last warning. Many more may have died, but the AMERICAN RED ARMY chose to spare the lives of its BLACK AND HISPANIC BROTHERS AND SISTERS. The ZIONISTS must leave southern Lebanon. All political prisoners must be FREED. Do not take us LIGHTLY. The AMERICAN RED ARMY will strike swiftly and with greater and greater effect. The AMERICAN RED ARMY demands the restoration of all budget cuts in Medicare and Social Security. We demand that all BLACKS AND HISPANICS be granted their rightful places in AMERICAN SOCIETY. The BLACK PEOPLE must rule in all of Africa. DEATH TO THE FASCIST-IMPERIALIST PIGS. ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE.
Johnny Katanos drove the van slowly down Vernon Boulevard, in Long Island City, in Queens, listening to Muzzafer read the final draft of their latest media pronouncement. Effie had written it, as she had written the first one, but Muzzafer read it as if it was his own, then waited for Johnny’s comment.
“It’s perfect,” the Greek responded. “It doesn’t say a goddamn thing.”
“It’s not supposed to say anything.”
“Yeah, I know. But it doesn’t say anything without any style, which isn’t so easy to do.”
“In that case, it’s perfectly fitting, since we didn’t really accomplish anything either.” Muzzafer was still upset over the failure of their project in Williamsburg. They could have blown the pipe with a radio-activated detonator, but to do so would have put them at the scene when the explosion took place, an added risk in a small Brooklyn neighborhood which Muzzafer had not been willing to accept. Now he was forced to accept the consequences of his decision; he’d hoped to kill half the politicians in New York and succeeded in destroying two unknown patrolmen. Killing cops in Brooklyn and Jews in Staten Island was not likely to bring New York to its knees. But it might result in a bored, unreliable Johnny Katanos.
Johnny, however, even though he’d argued in favor of a remote detonator and had expected to be the one to flip the switch, was neither angry nor bored. He knew the next time, whatever they did, he would be there, watching. Muzzafer could not risk another dud. He could not risk having the American Red Army think of itself as inept. “Listen,” Johnny said, his hand resting on Muzzafer’s shoulder, “there’s no good reason why you should feel bad about what happened in Williamsburg. I know everybody wanted to start off big, but we’ll get ’em next time.”
“Yes,” Muzzafer said, absently. “Next time.”
“Look, man, it was a tremendous fucking explosion. Don’t minimize the accomplishment. It happened exactly the way Jane said it would; it blew the shit out of that building.” Johnny squeezed Muzzafer’s shoulder, a sympathetic, brotherly gesture, then allowed his thumb to graze the smaller man’s neck as he pulled away. He noted the quick shiver and Muzzafer’s hand rising to the place where he was touched. “Anyway, I’ve got a good idea.”
“Say, ‘big idea.’” Muzzafer laughed. “It’s going to have to be very big. We’ve done two projects with a grand total of three casualties.”
“Shit, man, we were lucky there was even the two cops standing in front when the thing went off. Another ten seconds and all we’d have for our trouble is plaster and glass.”
They stopped at a light by the Roosevelt Island Bridge at Thirty-sixth Avenue and Johnny stretched, flexing the muscles in his arms, waiting for Muzzafer to look over. This whole business, this sexual guessing game which he played and which he suspected, though he wasn’t sure, that Muzzafer understood, was becoming almost as interesting as their regular projects, a kind of added bonus for his service in the American Red Army. During their months of training in Libya, he had been too busy and too fascinated, especially with the explosives, to be bored. It wasn’t until they’d reached New York and began to set up their operation that he realized how much of a terrorist’s life revolved about waiting. Muzzafer insisted that they lead utterly mundane lives—leave the house at the same time every morning, come home in the early evening, watch television. Fighting and drinking in public were abso
lutely forbidden. They were not even allowed to carry weapons.
Not surprising, then, that Johnny, who understood that, for him, boredom was as potentially destructive as domestic strife, was committed to finding out just how far the Arab could be pushed. Of course, if he actually succeeded in seducing Muzzafer, he would gain control of the operation without losing any of the Arab’s contacts. For a moment, he flashed back to his teenage years, to his puberty, spent almost entirely at the Brookshire School for Boys, a model institution for unwanted children who hadn’t yet committed a crime serious enough to merit real incarceration. Muzzafer complained constantly of his boyhood in refugee camps, of the hardship, the indignity, but Johnny knew that with his face and body, if Muzzafer had ever been in a place like Brookshire, the other boys would have had him wearing lipstick and a wig before he got through processing.
Just as the light was about to change, Johnny glanced across the car and saw, with satisfaction, Muzzafer’s dark eyes flick over to the ropy blue veins lining his forearms. Slowly and deliberately, he tightened his grip on the steering wheel until the muscles bulged. In Brookshire, one of his nicknames had been ‘Coony’ because, the others teased, he had even less body fat than the colored kids.
They rode the last few blocks in silence, up to the entrance to a large, fenced yard with a small building set far back. The sign on the building read PELLAGRINO OXYGEN SUPPLY and the yard was filled with orange and green tanks.
“One time,” Johnny explained, “after I got out of jail, I took a job as an apprentice welder and I learned to use a cutting torch. Those green tanks are filled with oxygen and the orange ones contain acetylene. If you hook them together, they make a flame hot enough to cut steel. When the tanks are full, there’s enough pressure to bust out buildings, but the cylinders almost never blow under ordinary conditions because the walls are an inch thick and neither gas is explosive until it’s mixed with the other. But if we were to create some non-ordinary conditions, if we were to, for instance, set off a separate explosion that ruptured the walls of the tanks, we’d have a triple threat: concussion, fire, and shrapnel. Three for the price of one.”
A Twist of the Knife Page 11