By the time Leonora entered the office, Bradley was very excited. He had not come to his position by making a habit of failure, but here, on the most important case in his career, he’d been utterly stymied. Quickly, while Leonora gulped her coffee, he laid out his conversation with the Libyan. “I pray he’s telling the truth. By God, Leonora, I don’t believe we’ve another hope of stopping them until they run out of ordnance and even then, since we don’t know what they look like, they might easily sneak out of the country.”
“But two million …” Leonora didn’t bother to finish the sentence.
“Oh, he’ll go for a lot less. The Arabs love to stretch it out. Ask for the moon then settle for pennies. Never seem to lose that Cairo shopkeeper mentality.”
Leonora blinked in disbelief. Was it possible he didn’t understand the racist implications of his words? “Well I have something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.” She jumped right into it, even knowing it was hopeless. “It’s about that policeman, Sergeant Moodrow. He was supposed to make written reports twice a week, but I haven’t heard from him at all.” She stopped, intimidated by Bradley’s paternal frown, then grew angry. “Listen, George, if you don’t have any confidence in my judgment, why don’t you come out and say so? There’s good reason to believe that the robbery of Ronald Chadwick was not just criminal warfare. It appears that this Greek boy came into the drug world suddenly and has now disappeared altogether. Two women were employed in his plan, women willing to have sex with strangers. If these women were whores, why haven’t they turned up? Why were they unknown in the neighborhood? Where did they go afterwards? I want to interview the survivor of the massacre, Paco Baquili. He’s being held at the Riker’s Island jail, pending transfer to an upstate penitentiary.”
“And what will you offer him if he’s already been sentenced? Why would he want to talk to you? As for the cop—why not pass Moodrow’s failure to report to his superiors and let them handle it?” Bradley took out his pipe and rumbled for his tobacco. An idea had begun to form in his mind and he needed a few extra seconds to think it out. If this lead proved fruitful, if he, George Bradley, developed this path to the American Red Army, wouldn’t he be better off if his associate, Leonora Higgins, was somewhere out in the field? Following a false trail at her own request? “Tell me,” he said, smiling, “why do you think there’s a connection between this Greek and the terrorists? Omitting the single fact of a Soviet hand grenade? I’m afraid you’ve become obsessed with this policeman and that’s the worst thing that can happen to an agent.”
“What about the killers? How they’ve all disappeared? That they were strangers in the neighborhood. What have I been talking about all this time? Look, remember last year, that mass murder in Brooklyn? The one where they found the kid crawling in the blood?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“They knew it was drugs and they knew who did it the next day, even if it took six months to find the killers. The drug world is just like the terrorist world.”
“No.” Bradley shook his head.
“Yes. It is. It’s a small community engaging in illegal activity, thoroughly penetrated by informers and undercover cops, where everybody knows everybody else. If some group made a quick raid on the Dutch Embassy, got away and never claimed credit, wouldn’t you be suspicious? If none of our informants, none of our spies, could give the group a past or a present…?” She stopped suddenly. Why did she have to justify herself to this man? The word “racist” passed quickly through her mind again. It was an easy place to hide and she welcomed the wave of hatred that followed behind it. “And I know,” she finished through clenched teeth, “that cop is holding back. I know it.”
Bradley put on his wisest, most fatherly expression as he paused to relight his pipe. In his own mind, he reeked of masculinity. In Leonora’s, he reeked of pompous vanity. Nevertheless, he raised his head to meet Leonora’s eyes. “OK,” he said, “if you need to get this out of your system, go ahead. We have no real disagreement here. I know the cop was holding back. I know the surly bastard’s playing some sort of stupid cop game. If you want to find out what it is, it’s fine with me. Sniff around. Satisfy yourself.”
Leonora kept silent. A memory of her father flashed quickly through her mind. She recalled the moment when she’d put it together and understood that all the problems between her mother and father stemmed from her father’s use of drugs, specifically heroin. He was nodding over the kitchen table; her mother was screaming something about “the money” and he didn’t even have the energy to answer her back. Once again the loathing she’d felt as a child flooded her, and she stared at her superior with angry eyes.
Bradley felt none of this. Oblivious, he stepped forward and gave her shoulder a brotherly squeeze. “Go get him,” he said.
Quickly, before she could say something she couldn’t take back, Leonora turned and walked to her own office, thinking, this can’t be happening to me. How can a day keep going bad like this? Jamming files into her attaché case, she fought a sudden urge to cry. The injustice of it overwhelmed her and by the time she reached the elevator, she was so angry she smashed at the row of floor buttons with the heel of her hand, lighting a cluster of six, and made every floor on her way to the garage and a black, four-door Plymouth Fury with matching black-wall tires, standard bureau issue.
Leonora cut quickly through the late morning traffic on the Long Island Expressway, then wheeled onto the Grand Central Parkway and into much lighter traffic. It felt good to go fast, to glide past the other cars. Taking a deep breath, she felt her shoulders relax, the tension beginning to ease out as she put her attention on the task to come. How would she deal with Paco Baquili? What could she offer him? Unfortunately, her train of thought was interrupted by a glowing set of revolving red lights as a marked police cruiser roared up to her bumper. Leonora could see the two cops smirking as they waved her to the curb. They knew they were pulling over a government car. That’s what made it fun.
And sure enough, both cops emerged from the car, highway cops in long, black, leather coats and high-topped boots. They came forward, one to the driver’s and one to the passenger’s side window, standard practice in dangerous situations, but totally inappropriate here.
“Stopped you for speeding, Miss. License and registration, please,” the cop closest to her began.
“FBI,” Lenora said, holding up her identification. She was so angry, she couldn’t bring herself to look at him.
“Oh, look,” the same cop cried, “FBI. Well, whoopie for the FBI.” He demonstrated his contempt with an impromptu ballet, turning a complete circle on his toes. The second policeman took this opportunity to express his own feelings on the matter. “What’re ya chasin’? A known felon? I don’t see any perps here. Ya not allowed ta speed unless you’re in ‘hot pursuit.’ I mean I don’t make the rules, but we can’t have law officers runnin’ over pedestrians, can we?” Like Abbott relieving Costello, the first cop, his dance completed, switched back on. “I’m afraid we’re gonna have to give you a ticket, Miss. And I hope it’s a good lesson for ya.”
Leonora flicked open the clasp on her purse, a reflexive action, which cleared the way to her perfectly legal 9mm automatic, then returned her hand to the steering wheel. It was not a planned move, yet it had its effect. The two cops passed each other an apprehensive look, then disappeared with her identification. Once in the safety of their own car, however, they recovered enough of their original bravado to make Leonora wait a full twenty minutes before the first cop sauntered back. “I’m gonna let ya go this time,” he said, laying the papers in her oustretched palm. “But in the future, please try ta watch how fast ya drivin’.”
Not to be outdone, Riker’s Island demonstrated once again that giving federal agents a hard time had become a permanent part of every city worker’s mentality. For the most part, the federal government did nothing to hide its contempt for New Yorkers, considering the payback resulting from that contempt a cause of the cont
empt in the first place. It was a vicious circle and even though Leonora could have predicted her two-hour wait for Paco Baquili, she could in no way accept it and her mood flipped from anger to self-pity every ten minutes.
Paco, when he finally appeared, did nothing to lighten her disposition. His entire conversation consisted of a single, emphatically offered sentence.
“Paco, I’m Agent Leonora Higgins, FBI.”
“Fuck you.”
“I want to talk to you about a Greek and two women.”
“Fuck you.”
“They’re the ones who put you here.”
“Fuck you.”
There’s something about being sentenced to seven years in a New York State maximum security prison that brings out the least cooperative elements of the human personality. Paco, in his heart of hearts, just didn’t give a damn, though he would have thought twice about doing this in front of a male, New York City cop.
“Sergeant Moodrow from the NYPD was here to see you last week. What was that all about?”
“Fuck you.”
“Listen, you little bastard, I’m not fooling around with you. If I don’t hear something else this time, I’m gonna make you pay the price for your mouth.”
Paco’s grin increased to near bursting. “Fuck you… nigger.” Then he exploded with laughter and Leonora was forced to confront the problem first posed by George Bradley. Paco was a prisoner of New York State, a man convicted of state crimes, a man already sentenced. Leonora had neither threat nor reward at her disposal and Paco clearly knew it. His contempt attacked her blackness and her femininity as well as her professional status. She stood and began to circle, hands behind her back, looking perplexed. Paco’s cuffed hands were in his lap and he was very confident. He didn’t bother to follow her with his eyes, a costly mistake as she evened up in the only way open to her. She drove a side kick into his right ear, producing an astonishing amount of virtually instantaneous swelling and a strangled sound that in no way resembled, “Fuck you, nigger.” Then she quickly circled the room, pushing over the chairs, moving the table out of center.
“What’re you doin’?” Paco demanded.
Leonora answered by pounding on the door, which brought in two enormous black corrections officers. “This fool tried to hit me,” Leonora explained.
“That right?” The two men stared at Paco like he was an insect under glass.
“He says he doesn’t believe blacks have a place in law enforcement. He says we’re all nigger scum. I haven’t time to file a complaint. Probably never get anywhere anyway. Judges just turn ’em loose. I thought I’d let you know so you could keep an eye on him.”
The taller of the two guards threw her a quick ghetto wink. “Don’t you worry yourself, mama. We prepared to handle this situation. Happens all the time.”
Leonora contained her reaction to the word “mama”; she even managed to smile her way out of the jail, but once on the street, she had to lean against the side of her car for a few moments. She felt like a prize fighter, like a slugger wading into punch after punch before having a chance to deliver a blow of her own. Maybe it wasn’t worth pursuing a line of action that met with so much resistance. It was certain that her day would not improve. She had to go to Moodrow now. There was no other path to the knowledge she needed. Even if she interviewed every friend of a friend mentioned in the police report and she came up with a likeness of Johnny Katanos, Bradley would never give her enough time to follow through. It was Moodrow or nothing.
Moodrow was preparing for his last day at the 203rd Precinct when the bell rang. He expected to find the widow Torrez behind his door, armed with a plate of food. Since Rita’s death, she’d been after him like an owl on a mouse. The utterly unexpected sight of Leonora Higgins standing in his hallway, brought him up short. “Aaaaaaaaa,” he muttered.
“May I come in?” she asked.
Moodrow considered his dining room table covered with notes, the maps pinned to the walls. “No,” he said simply, as if such a response was perfectly normal.
“What’s the matter with you?” Leonora asked angrily. She was very tired of being pushed around. “I want to come in and talk to you about Chadwick and the American Red Army.”
“Not right now, Miss. Sorry.”
“Can’t you at least be civil?”
“I’m not trying to hurt your feelings,” Moodrow shifted gears, “but, see, I got this girl in there and right this very minute now she’s kneeling on my kitchen table, buck naked. Like I would invite you in anyway. Really. But she’s a little embarrassed because she’s kind of fat. Actually she’s real, real fat, so better we should talk out here.”
“I’m getting tired of this,” Leonora said through clenched teeth.
“Look, lady, I don’t care what you’re tired of. Anything I got is already in that goddamn briefcase you carry around everywhere.”
“Is it?” she fired back. “I know it’s supposed to be. You were ordered to file reports twice a week, but I don’t have a goddamn thing.”
“So I’m a little behind. Big fucking deal. If I had something important, I would have been to see you already.”
Leonora could stand it no more. “I need some help,” she yelled.
Moodrow waited until her voice stopped echoing in the hallway. “That I don’t deny,” he said evenly, closing the door. “Why don’t you take two aspirins and call me in the morning?”
Despite being totally drunk and in his own bed, Stanley Moodrow could not fall asleep. He had just finished his last day in the 203rd, a session devoted to canvassing the various neighborhood bars. The exercise had produced no result, not even a nibble, and, reasoning that he was on vacation and not on-duty, Moodrow had begun to drink early in the evening. By the time his night was finished, he was far too drunk to drive and had to accept a ride home in an ordinary patrol car.
Upstairs, he barely managed to get off his shoes and pants before collapsing on the bed. He expected oblivion, would have welcomed it, but for some reason, instead of unconsciousness, his imagination kept throwing out instant replays of his walk up Sixth Avenue to meet Rita, a montage of people and vehicles, noisy radios and taxi horns. Try as he might, he could not throw it off until he shifted into what he had come to call “the fantasy.”
He’d been having the fantasy several times each day, usually while driving. Alone in a room with a helpless American Red Army (the number varied from four to ten), he tormented them by drawing out the moment of their execution. Sometimes they were chained in a circle; sometimes they were beaten so badly they were unable to move. On this particular night, he had them handcuffed to a vertical hot water pipe in a tenement kitchen.
Several begged for mercy. One, outraged, asserted her right to a fair trial, demanding justice. Still another tried to spit on him. He ignored them. Sitting at the kitchen table, he took his gun apart and cleaned it, piece by piece, spinning the cylinder like a wild-West cowboy before inserting six specially prepared bullets. He held each one up for the Army’s inspection before sliding it home. The tips had been cut off so that the .38-caliber slugs would not so much penetrate as smash their way into each body.
Then Moodrow, the gun a toy in his huge hand, stood up and began to move toward his victims. He saw the fear in their eyes, that they knew he was going to execute them without benefit of judge or jury. The fear comforted him. It reached out a dark, enveloping warmth that enabled him, at last, to fall asleep.
18
ALLEN EPSTEIN, CAPTAIN, NEW York City Police, stared, bleary-eyed across the kitchen table at his wife of thirty-seven years, Alma. Watching her transform the contents of their refrigerator into French toast (with blueberries), maple syrup, sausage links, orange juice and coffee, he marveled at her early morning efficiency. His stomach was hurting him again: a sort of borderline pain that might go either way. Not, he reflected, that Alma would make any concessions to his sensitive gut. She played her Jewish mother role to the hilt. Believing that any illness that couldn’t b
e cured with food was not worth acknowledging, she countered all established medical opinion with a single sentence: “So what do they know?” Epstein had stopped arguing a long time before and, truth to tell, loved to eat her cooking. He knew what was bothering him. It was Moodrow. And the irony that the man he used to handle precinct “problems” had become a problem himself did not escape the captain. He’d gotten a call from a lieutenant at the 203rd Precinct in Queens, a natural pain in the ass who minded everyone else’s business, and the details of Moodrow’s activities had come to light. The sergeant, as Epstein had suspected, was on a hunt. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean that the American Red Army would be at the end of the hunt. Or that Moodrow wasn’t making his reports to the FBI on schedule. But after twenty years in the 7th, Epstein would always have bet his pension that Moodrow was out for revenge. In the last analysis, no matter what Moodrow fed Higgins and Bradley in his “reports,” he would take down the American Red Army all by himself.
If the sergeant was wrong it didn’t matter, but what if he was right? Thirty-three people had died in the fire at Herald Square. How many in the next attack? A hundred? A thousand? Moodrow, deluded or now, was willing to risk lives for personal revenge. He was throwing dice, betting that he could get to the Army before it acted again, and that idea angered the cop in Allen Epstein. Artist’s renderings of the Red Army, shown on television, would at least drive them underground, preventing more bloodshed. A cop could never put his own feelings above society’s need for protection. The idea was to put criminals away and the effort was a team effort. Of course, there were plenty of hotdogs who didn’t like to share their collars, but they stopped short of allowing criminals to run free. Moodrow was on the wrong side of the line.
A Twist of the Knife Page 21