“For the price I had to sell,” he said by way of explanation, “it would have been better if you shot ’em. Now tell me when you need this car?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Ah, well, I got just the thing for you.”
They walked up Avenue C to 11th Street, then west to Avenue A. There, parked on the corner, was a 1974 Buick LeSabre. The windshield had a long, horizontal crack at eye level and the vinyl top was blistered and torn, but inside, the upholstery was fairly good, all rips having been taped, except for the driver’s seat, which had sunken nearly to the floorboards and was stuffed with newspapers.
“I give you this one for two reasons. First, engine and transmission are good, so it’s still very fast. Like from the factory. Second, the registration don’t expire for six weeks, so you could drive around without piling up tickets every time you gotta park. What you think?”
“It’s OK, Pauli. Look, I really appreciate this. I…”
“Forget that shit,” Pauli interrupted. “You done me plenty favors and don’t forget, she was some of my peoples, ’cause I drink in her bar. You kill those maricons. Cut their balls off.”
“I intend to.”
“That’s good. That’s very good. You come to my house tomorrow morning. I’ll have the key and the registration.”
“Thanks, Pauli.”
Moodrow walked down Avenue A to St. Marks Place, then cut over almost to Third Avenue, to a very small shop called Fantasy Routes which dealt in every variety of map, from two-hundred-year-old, hand-drawn Italian maps of Antarctica to the most mundane world atlas. Inside, he purchased a five-borough Hagstrom wall map which showed every street in New York City.
From there, he walked east again, to a small liquor store on 7th Street, between B and C. The store inside looked like a bank. Except for a small standing area, it was completely closed off behind 2-inch-thick lucite sheets, guaranteed to stop anything smaller than a howitzer. The man behind the register, Al Berkowitz, perennial cigar protruding from the right side of his mouth, nevertheless managed a rare smile.
“Well, well, if it ain’t the Captain,” Berkowitz began his usual taunt.
“Cut the crap, Al.”
“If you woulda listened ta me twenty years ago, you woulda been inspector by now. With a limousine.”
“So where’s your limousine?”
“You know what I got? You’re a mindreader, now? I live in New Jersey, not in this sewer and what I got, I ain’t bringin’ here.” He hesitated a moment, then continued in a softer voice, a voice ordinarily quite foreign to his personality. “I’m sorry about ya trouble, Stanley.”
“Thanks, Al. Just give me a quart of Old Crow.”
“Rotgut.” The old man seized the opportunity to resurrect his usual irascibility. “Keep drinkin’ that shit and watch what happens. You coulda been a big wheel, the people you had lookin’ after ya. Nobody in the whole department had arrests like you. You were a legend.”
“I’m still a fucking legend.”
“See what I mean?” Berkowitz said, shoving the bottle into a paper bag. “Always the wise guy. Stanley knows it all. Heaven forbid anyone should learn the great Stanley Moodrow anything. Big time cop.” Still talking, he put the bottle into a sliding drawer and pushed the drawer across to Moodrow’s side of the partition, never once stopping. “So how come you’re still a sergeant? I knew your mother when she was a little girl. We grew up together, but I live in New Jersey while you never got outta the East Side.”
“Close it up, Al,” Moodrow sighed. “I’m getting tired of the same song every time I come in here. Maybe I’ll find another liquor store and put you outta business.” He walked toward the door, opened it, but the old man, chewing his cigar furiously, could not resist a parting shot.
“Fifty years I’m here. A wife and a child I buried and they didn’t run me out of here.” He began to go off like a windup toy. “I was burglarized fifteen times and I stayed. I got stitches all over my head, but I stayed and now I got something for myself. But you…”
“Good bye, Al. Sleep well.”
Now thoroughly prepared, Moodrow walked the ten blocks to his apartment, his mind free to consider strategy. Once inside, he pulled down the photographs on the largest wall in his living room, unfolded the map and pinned it up, carefully tugging at the corners to straighten the creases. Then he poured himself half a glass of bourbon, carried it to a small desk along with a notepad and began to work.
First, he listed everything he knew about the American Red Army, from the murder of Ronald Chadwick to the bombing of Herald Square to a catalogue of their weaponry. He knew that at least three of the gang were white. He could trace one of them to Queens County through three sources—Paco Baquili, the tickets found on Enrique Hentados, and Frankie Baumann. He knew that all of their actions had been confined to New York City. He also had good likenesses of three of the gang—Johnny Katanos and two unarmed females which he would take to Andrea McCorkle, an artist and longtime resident of the neighborhood, to have made into something more natural and then to the photocopiers before distribution.
And that was it, the sum of Moodrow’s factual knowledge, but from this he was able to draw a number of inferences, as well as to plan a course of action. He reasoned that the terrorists were living in New York City, somewhere in the five boroughs. While this was the weakest link in his chain of logic, he did have several facts pointing to that conclusion as well as the knowledge that if they were not living in the city itself—if they were living in New Jersey or out on Long Island—he had no hope of tracking them down, so he might as well proceed as if he was sure of New York residence. Considering this, he took a black Magic Marker and drew the boundaries of every police precinct directly onto the map, adding their numbers on their exact locations. Then he wrote the name of every cop he knew to be working in a particular precinct on a piece of paper, adding a star to any who’d attended Rita’s funeral and taped it within the boundaries of the precinct.
Warming to his task, he began to shade out large areas, New York’s totally black or totally Spanish neighborhoods—Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant, Flatbush, East New York, Bushwick and Brownsville in Brooklyn; South Jamaica, Hollis, Corona and St. Albans in Queens; almost all of the southeast Bronx including Highbridge, Bedford Park, Kingsbridge, Fordham, Morrisania, Melrose, Mott Haven, Tremont and East Tremont. Proceeding from the opposite end of the economic spectrum, he eliminated the wealthier neighborhoods, including half of Manhattan, as well as smaller sections of the outer boroughs like Bayside and Jamaica Estates. When he finished, the map was quite a bit smaller, with enormous sections of every borough but Staten Island blacked out completely. There was no way three whites and an Arab could live in any of these neighborhoods without attracting attention, and anonymity—the ability to pass their days as unseen faces in the enormous crowd that makes up public New York—would have to be of primary importance in their overall struggle. Without knowing it, Moodrow was following the same line of reasoning as Muzzafer had when he originally sought his “safe” house.
Switching from a black to a red Magic Marker, Moodrow began to draw thin stripes through areas of special interest. First, Middle Village, Ridgewood, Maspeth and Glendale in Queens, the neighborhoods closest to the Ridgewood Theatre, then any very mixed neighborhood. In the 70s and 80s, as in previous generations, New York had experienced a wave of new immigrants, all lusting after the bright lights and big bucks. This time they came from every continent, from Ghana to Bangladesh to Brazil to Lithuania, concentrating in such numbers as to change the character of neighborhoods overnight. Flushing, in Queens, got special attention. It had gone from a white neighborhood going black to an Oriental bazaar in the space of ten years. By now, the signs on the shops were as likely to be written in Japanese or Korean or Sanskrit or Arabic as in English. A small group, a gang, could come into one of the low, six-story apartment buildings and vanish. Forest Hills and Jackson Heights were experiencing similar turmoil, as wel
l as areas of Canarsie and Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. It seemed that every vacant lot was being bought up, with two-to-four family homes erected overnight, and the buyers were as likely to be immigrants as native Americans.
Staten Island presented a totally different problem. It was enormous, with few black or Spanish neighborhoods and there were no subways to act as starting points for a search. But Staten Island had two strikes against it as a possible home for the Red Army. There were relatively few apartment buildings. The two-family homes, of which there were a great number, usually had the owner occupying one of the apartments, a situation guaranteed to create a clear and present danger to anyone trying to hide anything. But, more importantly, Staten Island, as most New Yorkers know, is the borough of civil servants, especially cops, firemen and sanitation workers, and the most clannish of New York’s boroughs. Moodrow would give it low priority.
Manhattan, too, would receive little attention from Moodrow, but for an entirely different reason. Manhattan was just too expensive. Apartments were almost impossible to find, even in rundown neighborhoods. Parking garages charged two to four hundred dollars a month to park a car. Life in Manhattan was a constant struggle to beat a system designed to crush the newcomer, for while vast areas of Manhattan fell under rent control laws and thus had relatively cheap apartments, none of those apartments ever came on the market. They were passed on from one generation to the next, or else warehoused by landlords who no longer wished to provide services in a losing proposition.
Finally, Moodrow concluded his night’s work, by making a list of New York City’s neighborhoods, beginning with Ridgewood and proceeding from the most to the least likely to hide the American Red Army. Next to each, he wrote the number of the precinct charged with its protection. Tomorrow he would begin to plod, putting one foot in front of the other in true flatfoot fashion, from precinct to precinct, renewing old acquaintances, calling in debts. His friends would take him to meet the people who see New York’s faces—token clerks, newsstand proprietors, hot dog salesmen, check-out girls, waitresses and waiters, bus drivers. He would pass on the likenesses of Katanos and the two women. He would work twelve, fourteen hours a day, pursuing any rumor, any lead. It was what New York cops do best. They just keep going.
Leonora Higgins had not had to make a real decision since the day she joined the FBI and, sitting in the kitchen of her Park Slope apartment, she realized she was way out of practice. From her earliest training to her assignment under George Bradley, her life had been one long series of directives. It had been so easy. Memorize the training manual. What are the requirements for a legal wiretap? How to make a good arrest. How to avoid entrapment. What do you do if you’re offered a bribe? Bradley had not acted any differently. Handle this paperwork. Memorize this list of informants. Interview the complainant. Search the file.
So easy and now this idiot of a New York cop, this ultimate cartoon flatfoot, was forcing her into independence. She did not know how to resist, because, at heart, she had a cop’s desire for truth, and all her instincts were leading her to the conclusion that Stanley Moodrow possessed or could find out what she wanted to discover for herself. The fact that George Bradley ridiculed this belief and refused to allocate any manpower to following up on Moodrow’s investigation only added to her dilemma.
She knew Moodrow would not tell her anything. He was supposed to be assigned to her, but she had listened to him at Epstein’s office and seen his face. Not only did Moodrow know how to find the Greek, but nothing would make him tell her. Nothing she could say or do or threaten would make any difference. She could complain to Bradley—and, if she hadn’t heard anything in a week, would—but Bradley wouldn’t listen, and even if he did and acted on it, it might just drive Moodrow deeper into his protective shell. Epstein and Flynn would stand up for Moodrow, no matter what. It was all up to her.
What to do? She sat in her kitchen, in a silk slip, her hair still wet from the shower. An untouched Budget Gourmet frozen entree (Chicken à la King) rested on the table in front of her while she cursed Moodrow for complicating her life. At her age, unmarried, she was supposed to be worried about boyfriends, dinners at Lutèce, late nights at the Palladium. Not how to shadow a New York cop.
But that was the best she could come up with—follow Moodrow and wait for him to catch the crooks. How ridiculous, she thought. The modern FBI agent thinks in terms of wiretaps, sting operations, bugging devices, racketeers turned stoolie. Nobody shadowed criminals, gumshoe style. She imagined herself hiding in doorways, pretending to windowshop, disappearing in the shadows, and laughed out loud. There must be a better method, because she knew she had to do something. In her own way, she was as stubborn as Moodrow. Wearily, she reached for the phone. She would call her current boyfriend, Alexander, thinking that if he came over, at least she would get to sleep. Tomorrow was time enough to confront her problem. She would retrieve Moodrow’s file, copy it, and smuggle it home. Then she would study it for, of all things, clues.
16
THE FIRST DAY OF the search and the worst conditions possible—a heavy, unrelenting spring rain. The droplets danced across the pavement, across sidewalks, exploding on rapidly moving umbrellas to create perfect, tiny fountains, silver mushrooms, on every hard surface. But Moodrow was unmoved by the weather, absolutely indifferent to it. He noted the conditions, of course, heard the rain before he left his bed, and shrugged into an ancient, black raincoat and a narrow-brimmed, waterproof hat. Then he walked the two blocks to Pauli Corallo’s loaned Buick, got in and turned the key, thinking the weather would be a perfect test of the car’s reliability. He was pleased, though not surprised, when the big sedan started instantly. He would not have expected it of a department car, nor the clean windshield and new wipers. Smiling to himself, he flipped on the radio, tuned in the local news, and swung out into the traffic, on his way to Queens County and Victor Drabek, sergeant of the 203rd Precinct.
He headed over the Williamsburg Bridge, into the expected bumper-to-bumper Brooklyn-Queens Expressway traffic; he sat unruffled in the midst of it, not even thinking of the American Red Army or his strategy in trying to find it. This was the nature of his business and he understood that his progress, should there be any, would be slow, his frustrations enormous—a grinding process calculated to produce results in direct proportion to the consumption of shoe leather and tire treads. There would be no shortcuts, no sudden burst of inspiration, only a thoroughness that consumed the clock even as it honed the desire for success.
He drove directly to the 203rd on Juniper Valley Road in Middle Village. He didn’t bother to stop for breakfast; he would eat five times before his day’s canvassing was over. The precinct ruled over northwestern Queens, including Ridgewood, Glendale, Maspeth and Middle Village, all neighborhoods of prime concern. He drove out to the Long Island Expressway, exiting at Maurice Avenue and turning right onto 69th Street, a route that passed within six blocks of an unsuspecting American Red Army.
Aftab Qwazi Muzzafer and Johnny Katanos, in a 1984 Toyota Celica registered to Jane Mathews, drove through the same rain washing over Stanley Moodrow’s Buick. Muzzafer drove down Metropolitan Avenue, to Kent Avenue in Brooklyn, one block from the East River.
“This rain,” Muzzafer said wearily. “Always the rain and the cold. I think this is why Europeans are so obsessed with conquest. They will do anything to get to a sunny land.”
They were driving through the southern edge of Greenpoint, only a mile or so from the scene of what they called the “Rabbi Action,” trying to get a feel for the neighborhood surrounding the target chemical dump. At that time, Greenpoint had the distinction of being the murder capital of New York City, with more homicides per thousand population than famous neighborhoods like Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant or the South Bronx. On the eastern side of McGuinness Boulevard, remnants of a once dominant Polish-Italian population clung to the old ways. Blue collar from the first, they lived in well-kept three-and four-family homes. On the other side of McGui
nness Boulevard, the Puerto Ricans ruled. Violence was characteristic of both sides, but as the Puerto Ricans had yet to crack the barriers that prevented them from finding high-paying union jobs, their violence was filled with extreme poverty, with welfare families and broken-down buildings. It tended to happen in the streets.
But Greenpoint, first and foremost, was industrial, though not filled with the sort of giant factories which dominate the mill towns of New England. Greenpoint was a neighborhood where the young entrepreneur came to battle his way upward. The three-and four-story brick buildings housed businesses of every description—lumber yards, sweater factories, plumbing supplies, paper companies, engine rebuilders and dozens of trucking companies eager to deliver the enormous quantity of goods coming into New York City every day. The owners of these businesses spoke with accents reminiscent of every neighborhood in the city. Typically, they’d grown up in Canarsie or Queens Village, had inherited Dad’s business and not found college to their liking. But they were just as determined to move up as the hordes of newly graduated midwesterners who attack corporate Manhattan each spring, and their influence was especially strong in the area of western Greenpoint where Muzzafer and Johnny Katanos were engaged in their reconnaissance. There were few residential buildings left here. There were none, for instance, on North 5th Street between Berry and the East River, though, in spite of the rain, the block was bustling with activity as Muzzafer drove through it. By 7 PM, however, it would be deserted, as all those struggling capitalists made their way back to the tree-lined streets of suburbia.
“Are you fucking crazy?” In a rain that had slowed to a drizzle, Moodrow stood in front of an outdoor newsstand at the entrance to the subway stop at Fresh Pond Road and screamed at an obviously upset Sergeant Victor Drabek.
“Ah, c’mon, Sarge; take it easy.” Victor Drabek, short and squat, a fire hydrant next to a refrigerator, folded his arms across his chest.
A Twist of the Knife Page 18