A Twist of the Knife

by Stephen Solomita

  And something else, something more important. Epstein was a captain, an intermediate-level survivor of the competition between cops. Intra-departmental warfare was as intense as ever. If Moodrow should be successful (or worse, come close and fail) and it became known that he, Epstein, had knowledge of Moodrow’s activities without, for instance, making a phone call to the FBI to confirm that complete reports were, in fact, being filed, he would not last a month before being informed that retirement was infinitely preferable to a departmental hearing. Epstein, much as he loved his Alma, was not yet ready to be with her every minute of the day.

  “How about a bagel with a shmeer?” Alma asked, breaking his concentration.

  “Huh?” Epstein, his glasses still lying on his desk, could barely see her.

  “A bagel, Allen. I’m asking if you’re still hungry.”

  “No,” he groused. “My guts are on fire.”

  “It’s all that Moodrow’s fault, isn’t it? I don’t know why you protect him; he’s like a stone around your neck. Dragging you down. You woulda been inspector by…”

  “Enough already,” Epstein moaned. “You think that makes it better?” He paused a moment, sighed. “Maybe I oughta report it to Flynn.”

  “An Irish?” Alma cried indignantly. “Not to an Irish. An Irish’ll have the poor sergeant’s you-know-what’s for breakfast.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Alma. You just said I should bury my friend and now…”

  “But not an Irish. Find someone the boy can talk to.”

  “Boy? Moodrow’s a boy now?”

  “For crying out loud, Allen. Why can’t you understand about Stanley?” She shook her head decisively. “He’s a babe in the woods. The department’ll tear him to pieces. I can’t believe you could give him up to an Irish without talking to him.”

  “I get it, now. Lemme ask you this, Alma. If you wanted I should talk to Stanley personal, why didn’t you just say so? Why all the shouting?”

  “That was for your stomach, dear.” She smiled seductively. “I got onion rolls in the fridge.”

  Stanley Moodrow’s apartment was as clean as a whistle when Epstein knocked on the door. Having learned his lesson from Leonora Higgins’ unexpected visit, there wasn’t a trace of his investigation visible. Moodrow, welcoming the captain, was very proud of his industry until it became clear that Epstein knew almost everything about his activities in the 203rd.

  “Well, that didn’t take very long, did it?” Moodrow complained.

  “For Christ’s sake, Stanley, what did you expect? You got friends? I got friends, too. Not to mention guys that’re out to protect their own precinct. You can’t do this shit in a vacuum.”

  “I’m running an official investigation. What’s wrong with that?”

  Epstein looked up at Moodrow and frowned. This was going to take some time, either way. “Could I have a beer, Stanley?” His stomach twisted violently. “Please.”

  Moodrow made two open bottles of Budweiser and two glasses appear so fast he seemed to have pulled them out of a hat.

  “You saying you’re making reports on time?” Epstein sipped his beer. “You telling me those pictures of the Greek and his two girlfriends are in those reports?”

  Moodrow leaned back in his seat, folding his arms across his chest. “I’m looking for the assholes that killed Ronald Chadwick. If I’m a little behind on my reports, what’s the big deal? I don’t have anything important enough to report anyway. Don’t forget, Captain, right now the Greek is only linked to the Chadwick case. You sound like Higgins, trying to make a big deal out of it.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Stanley.” Epstein was suddenly so mad he was ready to cry. He jumped up and shouted into Moodrow’s face. “You’re after the scumbags who offed your old lady. You don’t give two shits about some junkies on Attorney Street. You believe they’re the same people and you want them for yourself. I know you got reasons you ain’t telling me. Whatta you think, I’m a complete moron? If I didn’t owe you, I’d bury your ass with the department. I want the goddamn truth, Stanley.”

  “Truth?” Moodrow stared into Epstein’s eyes. For a moment he considered telling the captain about the two women engaged in a shouting match on Sixth Avenue. Then he contemplated a future without revenge and drew back inside himself. He looked down at his feet, feigning a depression that would be only too real if he failed. “Look, Captain, I’m taking my shot. What’s the harm if it’s a long shot? I was there. I saw her die. I have to do something, Captain.”

  Epstein sat down. It was very difficult to pressure a man under these circumstances. Suppose the whole thing was no more than a means to get Moodrow through Rita’s death? Who would be harmed? Why not let the man work out his grief? But Epstein could not throw off the opposite line which knew for sure that Moodrow was too good a cop to lie to himself. If he thought the American Red Army was tied to the death of Ronald Chadwick, he had more information than he was sharing. “Stanley, you know what happens to me if you’re lying? If I don’t take this upstairs?”

  “I’m not lying, Captain.”

  “You lied about those two tickets to the Ridgewood Theatre. You didn’t put them in your report.”

  “But not to you. I didn’t bullshit you one second. I told you voluntarily about them tickets or you still wouldn’t know. Now you come and say I’m fucking you around? That ain’t right.”

  For all its revolutionary aims, the American Red Army was American in at least one respect—each of its members embraced the work ethic in pursuit of the group’s goals. Even as Moodrow persisted in his search and Epstein and Higgins pondered their next move, the Army, minus Muzzafer, who was unexpectedly late, sat around the kitchen table in Effie and Jane’s apartment, listening attentively to a taped phone conversation. They had decided, on their own, to follow up on a newspaper article dealing with a Sunday afternoon demonstration in front of an illegal chemical-waste warehouse in Brooklyn. The article had named the Society for a Safe City, a coalition of nearly a dozen ecology-oriented organizations, as the sponsor of the protest and listed the group’s telephone number.

  Theresa Aviles, scanning the papers each day for any reference of toxic material as part of her general research on hazardous waste, had found the article and thus received the honor of making the inquiring phone call. Not that the others were idle. Johnny Katanos had been inside the building twice. Effie had charted the schedules and routes of three major oil companies with depots on Newtown Creek, a permanently polluted East River inlet, and another on Bushwick Creek, not ten blocks from the target. Jane worked on the problem of igniting waste oil. It was very important that the fire continue long enough to cause a real panic. Hearing about a bombing, a good citizen might congratulate himself on being alive and out of danger, but if there were a cloud of gas coming and continuing to come, anything might happen.

  The woman who answered the phone at the Society for a Safe City, Eleanor Satowski, had been more than eager to discuss the situation at the North 5th Street chemical dump after Theresa identified herself as a resident of Greenpoint, a worried parent with three children living within six blocks of the warehouse.

  “If I was you,” she said, her voice sharply confident, “I’d get my ass out of there. Especially with kids. Kids are more vulnerable to every kind of cancer-causing agent.”

  “Moving takes money,” Theresa responded. “It’s not that easy.”

  “Maybe if I tell you what’s in there, it’ll change your mind. And I’m not taking this out of the air. We have a number of sources within the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s only too bad the media isn’t interested in using them. We’ve put out half a dozen press releases and they continue to print whatever the government feeds them.” She hesitated briefly, to let it sink in, then proceeded, rapid-fire. “There are several thousand barrels of oil sludge contaminated with polyvinyl-chloride, and dioxin. Dioxin, by the way, is the most powerful cancer-causing agent ever tested. This oil sludge is flammable, but only at ver
y high temperatures, and the EPA is taking the position that such temperatures could not be generated by an accidental fire. They refuse to even consider the possibility of a nonaccidental fire. Just throw a bunch of bullshit about ‘budgets’ and ‘priorities.’

  “The long-term effects,” she rolled right along, not even pausing to give her caller a moment to respond, “of smoke contaminated with PVC or dioxin aren’t that predictable, but there is something that is predictable. Our contact says there are hundreds of drums filled with cyanide and possibly a thousand with hydrochloric acid. If these substances should mix, even without a fire, they would give off a toxic gas that would kill thousands. And all they have to do is touch.”

  “How could this happen?” Theresa finally asked.

  “Good question. And a real simple answer. There was this man named Anastasio Parillo who used to be in the private sanitation business with his brother, Carmine. I guess they weren’t making enough money, because one day they sold their garbage trucks to a competitor and bought two big trailers. Then they went up and down the whole East Coast, picking up fifty-gallon drums of whatever anyone wanted to get rid of. They didn’t care what it was. As long as it wasn’t leaking, they put it in their trucks and brought it back to his warehouse. When the warehouse was full, they simply disappeared. EPA thinks they went back to Palermo.

  “Listen, Theresa, do you remember what happened in Cameroon? About two years ago?”

  “I don’t think so.” Theresa played dumb.

  “Well, nobody knows exactly how this happened, but somehow a cloud of toxic gas came out of this lake, Lake Nyos, and killed several thousand people. At first, the doctors didn’t know what they were dealing with. Just that people came into the hospitals with severe burns on their bodies and in their lungs. It’s only after they sent scrapings to the laboratory, that they discovered these were acid burns, the same kind of burns that would—notice, I don’t say ‘could’—be cause by a fire in that warehouse.”

  Effie Bloom, grinning from ear to ear, turned off the tape. “Isn’t America wonderful? The land of opportunity. That was very professional, Theresa. I don’t think you spoke over each other even once. It sounded like she was in the room.”

  “Thanks.”

  Muzzafer chose this moment to make his entrance. At first, he refused to listen to the tape, claiming his business was too important, then gave in when he saw the look of disappointment in their faces. He gave it close attention, smiling at the conclusion. “Very good news indeed. You were completely convincing, Theresa. But I’m going to have to postpone this business for a few days. This morning I saw a man I’ve been waiting a very long time to see. An Arab, Abou Farahad, who sells his friends to Jews. I followed him to his home and I have sentenced him to death. Johnny will come with me.”

  There was a lull while the Army digested Muzzafer’s message, then Theresa reacted. “Is it worth stopping our project just to get revenge? Why can’t we do the warehouse first, then take care of him?”

  “I have known this man for twenty years, Theresa. We worked together several times, and for a year, when it seemed every country in the world was hunting us, we taught strategy at a training camp in Syria. Do you understand? We were ‘drinking buddies’ in a country where alcohol is forbidden. He knows how I think and I have to suppose that he’s working with our enemies. I cannot risk leaving him alive. Besides, there are certain deeds, among Arabs, that demand revenge. When the Jews first invaded Lebanon, they could not tell who was a freedom fighter and who an ordinary Palestinian. Then, somehow, they captured Abou Farahad and he began to point out our strongholds, one by one. Hundreds were shot immediately by the Christian Phalangists. Thousands were taken prisoner and shipped to Israel, where the best still rot. His death will be very public and very painful, a lesson to all who consider betrayal.”

  Effie was first to speak, passing Theresa a quick glance before she began. “I want to go with you.”

  “No,” Muzzafer returned. “There’s no need for a crowd. The traitor lives in a quiet neighborhood.”

  “You’re deliberately excluding me,” Effie cried angrily. “And it’s not fair. I’ve been a good soldier through every action. Didn’t I, for Christ’s sake, let those repulsive freaks use me for a fucking blow-up doll. Now you’re pushing me away. Why? Because I’m a woman?” She looked across at Theresa once again.

  Muzzafer, smiling, held out his hand, palms up. “Listen, Effie, do you really think any one of us, including me, can match the skills of Johnny Katanos in this kind of a situation? If you want, you and Theresa can place and set the timer when we do the warehouse. And afterwards I think we’ll take a few weeks off. Separate for a little rest and recreation. It’ll give us a chance to recover our sense of purpose.”

  Leonora the Sleuth! The Shadow! Flitting in and out of the darkness. Each doorway becomes an avenue to invisibility. Alleyways offer infinite opportunities. Showroom windows are polished mirrors reflecting Stanley Moodrow’s every move. What could be easier than following a gigantic, clumsy cop as he stumbled through the teeming streets of New York City? And Stanley Moodrow, big as an elephant, would lead her directly to the American Red Army. No, better yet, she would snatch his line of investigation before he knew where it was going and arrest the Army herself.

  Fantasies come easily at 5:30 in the morning. Standing before her mirror, Leonora figured the whole thing would be a breeze. Uncomfortable, perhaps, but more drudgery than complexity. She slipped the tails of a mauve, silk blouse under the waist of a white skirt, paused to admire herself, than added a small, white scarf in place of a tie. It was a chilly April morning and she grabbed a light wool topcoat, suitably dark in color, and headed out the door, two-inch heels clacking on the marble lobby floor.

  For once, she was right on time and Moodrow left his house less than ten minutes after she arrived. Without giving his rearview mirror a second thought, he headed out to Queens Village and the 210th Precinct, which lay on the border of Nassau County. A narrow tongue of working middle-class homes and apartments, it projected, like a buffer, between the more affluent neighborhoods of Bayside and Little Neck to the north and Hollis and St. Albans, both black, to the south. Twenty years before, Queens Village, lying along three main thoroughfares, was filled with empty lots where kids played ball or parents picked blackberries in August. Now it was almost completely developed, though zoning laws kept new construction to five floors or less. The section that most interested Moodrow was a rambling neighborhood of attached, two-story garden apartments called Glen Oaks. Containing more than two thousand units, it was involved in a coop-conversion battle, with the owners wanting to sell and the tenants, who enjoyed the protection of the city’s rent stabilization laws, wanting to stay. The result was anarchy. Speculators bought occupied apartments at half-price and took on the obligations of landlords in the hope that elderly tenants would die. Vacant apartments were quickly snatched up and a host of nationalities and races began to move into them. Bedsheet signs proclaiming the immovability of the Glen Oaks Tenants’ Association hung from dozens of windows, while the youngsters asserted their own determination with cans of spray paint.

  What better place to hide out? Glen Oaks lay on the north side of Union Turnpike, just east of Creedmoor State Hospital. As a six-lane street with timed signals, the Turnpike carried a lot of traffic between Manhattan and Long Island and naturally was lined with shops and restaurants. Moodrow did not have a close friend in this precinct, but he had checked in with the 210th’s captain, Luis Alvarado, and gotten permission to hunt in his usual fashion. He parked just past the Cross Island Parkway and began to walk east, stopping in every small business to talk with the owner. In most cases, he was out in two or three minutes but occasionally he stayed to chat with old-timers, to get a feel for the area.

  Despite all her fantasies, the instant Leonora Higgins stepped out of her car she felt as if she’d just jumped into the glare of powerful floodlights. Everything about her, from her skin to her sh
oes, seemed to be shouting “Look at me!” The people around here were resolutely working class and the only female in heels, besides herself, was a heavily made-up beautician with four-inch spikes on her way to work. Leonora looked like she should be hailing a cab on Madison Avenue, not a bus in Queens Village. And on top of that she had to stand around and pretend to be occupied while Moodrow gossiped with the local businessmen. Occupied with what? How long can a person stare at the display in a Woolworth window without being mistaken for an escapee from the mental hospital just down the street?

  Then it turned hot. The sun pushed through the clouds and by ten it was seventy degrees. Leonora took off her coat and folded it over her arms. The feeling of relief was so strong she didn’t even realize until 11 that her feet hurt. By noon, however, the pain was extraordinary. It came through in sharp jabs whenever her toes pressed together from walking. Sweating didn’t help; it merely softened the skin and encouraged blisters. By three o’clock, Leonora had passed from very uncomfortable to absolutely desperate. Still, she never gave two thoughts to abandoning her aim. Instead she concentrated on the problem, turning over a number of possibilities before hitting on the solution.

  Here she was, she reasoned, a black woman following a white, male cop through white neighborhoods. Even though Moodrow might never bother looking over his shoulder, she had already been noticed. That much was evident from the looks she was getting. They hadn’t bothered her yet because she was expensively and conservatively dressed. They made her out for odd, but not threatening. Still, sooner or later she would be forced to explain her business because, except for workers, there simply were no blacks in this area. Perhaps, she thought, she should approach Moodrow directly. If she informed him that she was going to follow him whether he liked it or not, he might take her on as an unavoidable nuisance. But she knew it was his city and if he actively tried to lose her, if for instance he moved in with friends somewhere, she’d never pick up his trail.