A Twist of the Knife

by Stephen Solomita

  “Then you know that I have you,” Bradley returned evenly.

  “Oh, was it me you were after? I thought it was Muzzafer you wanted.”

  “You admit that Muzzafer is behind these attacks?”

  “Surely. I admit it. How does this help you?”

  They finally agreed to the sum of $200,000, plus all posted rewards, with $10,000 up front, a total which relaxed Hassan immensely. So much so that he failed to respond to Bradley’s prophecies of what would happen if he failed to keep his end of the deal. He was as smugly self-confident as he’d ever been in his life and felt entirely superior to the obviously harried FBI agent. It was just at the peak, as Hassan bathed in his own invulnerability, that Bradley pulled the proverbial rabbit out of his briefcase. Passing the sketches across the front seat of his Plymouth, he asked, “Ever see these before?”

  As soon as Hassan glimpsed the first drawing, that of Effie Bloom, he had a quick vision of himself nailed to a fence in the Bronx. The image paralyzed him, which was just as well, for had he appeared to be startled, Bradley would not have let him off so easily.

  “Well,” Bradley repeated.

  Somehow, dimly, a crucial idea began to form in Hassan’s mind. If Bradley was sure of the identities of the faces he presented, why would he be asking Hassan for confirmation? If he wasn’t sure, recognition could be denied. But how could the Arab then return, one week later, with the same photos? He decided to stall long enough for his fear to dissolve. “If you know so much about this, why do you come to me? Do Americans like to give away their money?”

  Bradley phrased his reply carefully, so as not to affront the man he believed would take him to the American Red Army. He understood that failure in this situation, with a task force of one hundred and forty men at his command (or to have another government agency get to the terrorists first—the worst possible case), would mean the end of his FBI career. Even if he managed to hang on, they would bury him in some administrative hole in Washington.

  “Let’s say that someone says they might be part of this thing. I don’t think so, but I offer it to you, anyway.”

  Hassan shrugged his shoulders, the first movement he was able to make, then managed a small grin. “Well, I guess you’re out of luck. If I could make an identification personally, we would not have to wait a week. This doctor I spoke of is not such a fool as to let me see these photographs. If he did so, he would have nothing to sell. For all I know, they may well be Army members.”

  Hassan was pleased with his position. For a moment, his vision of verandahs in South Carolina had been replaced by equally vivid images of greasy dishes in South Boston. “Tell me one thing,” he continued. “Where did you get these sketches? That you need to ask me about them?”

  “I got them from a cop.” George Bradley shook his head in disbelief. “From a fat, stupid New York City cop.”

  Even as Muzzafer settled down to wait the few days before he could launch his final assault on New York, and George Bradley, after handing $10,000 to Hassan Fakhr, retreated into his office to wait for the set of photos that would lead him to the American Red Army, Major Dave Jacoby informed his aides that, for political reasons, he could not wait any longer and scheduled a 4:30 PM press conference. He and his aides were in a quandary. They had nothing whatever to offer the hordes of voters screaming for terrorist blood. Nor did they have access to FBI files on potential revolutionaries or a core of political informants such as that maintained by the CIA. Instead, they had had to content themselves with a list of former criminal-revolutionaries supplied by the House Committee on Internal Subversion. Thus, as the police commissioner had promised, hundreds of old-time labor organizers, civil rights activists, student revolutionaries and Vietnam-era peaceniks were called into police precincts, interrogated by hastily formed police “terrorist” squads and held for extended periods without being formally charged. Naturally, the media responded to this avenue of investigation by pointing out its dubious constitutionality, but the public, the voting public, according to all the polls, fully supported the police in their zeal to capture the American Red Army. All of which provided the mayor with a surefire avenue of escape.

  Dave Jacoby needed a scapegoat. True, arrested terrorists would be better, but he was realistic enough to know that such arrests could not come about through his efforts. The best he could hope for was that some cop would accidentally stumble across the Army in mid-kill, but until that happened, someone or something would have to be attacked. Thus a Gracie Mansion press conference with national coverage and the mayor spending twenty-five minutes haranguing the do-gooders, pinkos and fellow travelers whose misguided efforts brought aid and comfort to the enemy.

  Whether this line of defense fooled the voters or not is a matter of debate, but this much is certain; it did not fool Muzzafer who viewed it as evidence of his secure position. Nor did it fool Moodrow who, at 5:30 every morning, shrugged into his old, black raincoat and began to pound the pavement. He had his dream and his routine so carefully arranged that he rarely thought directly of Rita any more. Like a poorly edited film, whenever his thoughts began to move toward memories of Rita, there was a swift, sharp cut and his attention returned to the day’s activities. “Have you ever seen these people? Recognize these? They might live around here. If ya run into one of ’em, my number’s on the back.” In truth, his lack of success had numbed him so that he seemed like a man standing with one foot in the air, waiting for some push to set him in motion.

  He spent four days on Woodhaven Boulevard, an eight-lane road linking central Queens with Kennedy Airport and the Rockaways. The traffic lights along Woodhaven Boulevard are computerized and reverse mornings and evenings to favor inbound or outbound traffic. The cab drivers use it as a shortcut to the airport, especially in the afternoon, and while it doesn’t have as many shops as, for instance, Queens Boulevard, the smaller avenues feeding Woodhaven Boulevard—Myrtle, Metropolitan, Atlantic, Liberty—all had to be checked and that meant four days in the butcher’s, the barber’s, the five-and-ten, listening to every proprietor’s opinion on every subject imaginable. The method was simple: Park the car and start walking on the west side of the street. Continue south for six hours, then cross the road and work back toward the car. It’s not the most enjoyable way to spend one’s waking hours and many cops hate the routine. Moodrow, however, had always loved it. He had never personally been on an investigation in which the culprit was apprehended by gathering “clues.” The scientific aspect of police work was only useful after an arrest, to make a strong case where informants or witnesses could not be forced to testify, but the arrests themselves were inevitably the result of direct contact between cops and civilians. Finding the criminals had never been the problem. The dope dealers and the muggers were out there on the streets with the cops. Just that year, in New York, Operation Pressure Point had targeted the drug dealers in Moodrow’s home precinct. Without overly concerning themselves with legalities, they began to arrest the criminals they’d known about all along. Most of the arrests were thrown out, but for a brief period the most depraved of the Lower East Side’s residents stayed out of sight and the good citizens owned the streets.

  So the big cop went at it day by day, like a good bird dog quartering a field, nose to the ground. The dog, like a cop, knows the quarry is somewhere in the field. The trick is not to lose heart, to lift the nose before the trail is crossed. Queens was finished, at least theoretically; every neighborhood had been covered and in the normal course of things Moodrow would have moved on to Brooklyn or the Bronx, but he could not rid himself of the nagging sense of having left something out. Late at night, poring over his notes, a full glass untouched in front of him, he tried to get a handle on the situation. He had good reason to believe that the American Red Army—or at least one member of it—had lived in Queens. In the course of a normal investigation, there would be a half-dozen detectives out in the field. Likenesses of the suspects would have been distributed at every precinct roll call
. There were just too many empty spaces in his notes: too many closed stores; too many absent proprietors; too many indifferent sales clerks. He measured the faces he’d seen. How many had really looked? How many just nodded, then turned back to their customers?

  Moodrow decided to make a U-turn and go back to Queens. He decided to cover the busier stores, to forget the real estate salesmen, the printers, the plumbing supply houses, the clothing stores. He wanted coffee shops where people came to read daily newspapers, late night delicatessens, dry cleaners, supermarkets. This time he would wait until the merchants could speak to him, until the customers were out of the way, making sure they took a long look at the pictures. They would study them and their negative responses would finally convince him and he would to go the next field with the sense that he hadn’t left the quarry behind.

  It was nearly 4 AM by the time Moodrow put the period on the last thought. He fell asleep quickly for the first time in a week, a deep, dreamless sleep from which he awoke, at 5:30, in a very grouchy mood. He cursed his way into the bathroom, into his clothes, into his car and headed off to Ridgewood, Queens, with an equally aggravated Leonora Higgins following behind. Too many hours in a brown Plymouth can take the heart out of anyone and Leonora was even more depressed by Moodrow’s lack of success than Moodrow himself. It was interminable—not to be tolerated—especially by someone unused to such activity, someone whose idea of patience is sitting quietly while a colleague uses the office copier.

  Moodrow first visited the elevated M Train, pounding up the stairs to confront the token sellers. When they tried to push the sketches aside, he slapped the Plexiglass surrounding their booths and demanded that they “try harder.” Still, he received negative responses at all three Ridgewood stations, finishing on Metropolitan Avenue in front of the Metropolitan Diner, an enormous twenty-four-hour coffee shop, run, as are almost all the diners in New York City, by Greeks. Gazing at his notes, he recalled his last conversation with Epstein, then trudged inside. He walked directly to the cash register, ignoring the waiters and waitresses in their black pants and white shirts, and confronted the hostess.

  “I’m looking for George Halulakis,” he said, flashing his badge.

  The hostess, resplendent in gold necklace and matching bracelet, curled her full lips into a sneer. Her jet-black hair and olive skin revealed her to be a relative of the owners, as are most of the diner hostesses. Her duties were to escort the patrons to their tables, drop thick menus in front of them, then show her butt, wrapped in her tightest skirt, as she wiggled back to the register. She was fifteen years old. “He’s not here right now,” she declared without taking her eyes off the Daily News.

  Her offhand manner made it clear both that she was lying and that she didn’t care if he knew it. Perhaps if she’d bothered to look up, she might have realized that the big cop was not prepared to indulge the Greek American Princess (who can make the Jewish American Princess seem like Cinderella) syndrome, but she never raised her eyes.

  “And your name, Miss?” Moodrow inquired mildly.

  “Hemapolis,” she sighed.

  “Well, see, Miss Hemapolis, I really have to speak with your boss. Why don’t you just get him for me.”

  Slowly, as if at her own kitchen table, Miss Hemapolis flipped the pages of the newspaper. “I just tell you he is no here.”

  Moodrow paused for a moment, looking about him as if stone floors and leatherette booths were the only things in life that interested him. Except for a small group of takeout customers gathered at one end of the long counter, the restaurant was deserted. “Tell me,” he said, turning back to the young girl, “do you like to eat pussy?”

  “What you say?” Miss Hemapolis could not believe her ears.

  “The reason I ask is that if you don’t get your little hole in motion and fetch Halulakis, I’m gonna place you under arrest for hindering a police officer in the performance of his duty. Then I’m gonna drag your fat ass over to Riker’s and lock you up with the biggest, blackest bull dykes I can locate and you’re gonna suck them syphilitic cunts until someone goes your bail.”

  The look on the poor girl’s face had Moodrow fighting to maintain his expression. She staggered backward, wide-eyed, with her hands covering her breasts. A decade of religious education had done little to prepare her for this apparently insane giant who stared, expressionless, directly into her eyes. “I go,” she whispered, turning away.

  “Hope you like fish,” he called after her.

  Miss Hemapolis disappeared into the manager’s office, her mouth moving over the Greek syllables even before the door closed. Moodrow strolled over to the counter and began to question the waiters (all of whom were Greek) and the waitresses (none of whom were Greek) with no result until, as Moodrow knew he would, Mr. George Halulakis, short and very heavy, made his appearance.

  “You wish Halulakis. I am Halulakis.” He folded thick arms across a barrel chest and waited.

  Moodrow waited, too. He stared, unblinking, into the Greek’s eyes, as if the man should know exactly what he was after.

  “I am Halulakis,” the man repeated, fingering the gold chain around his neck. He was a important man, a businessman surrounded by the splendor of his creation, and he was not about to be intimidated.

  “Hi, I’m Sergeant Moodrow,” Moodrow said, as if nothing had passed between the hostess and himself. “Allen Epstein’s my captain and he told me to see you about some people I’m looking for.”

  Halulakis fell back at the mention of Epstein’s name. He twisted his mouth into a bow of disdain. “Why you remind me of this? At least here I come for peace and quiet. All my life ruined by Jewish woman. You know how smart she is? One week after her marriage she tell priest she want to be Orthodox. Now she say no divorce. Church no like divorce. Bishop himself speak to me. I say if she Orthodox why she no go to Confession? He say she worship in own way. This day I curse when first we meet.” He snorted once, shook his finger in the air. “You know how to make Jewish girl stop screwing? Marry her. No think is funny? You know how to make Jewish girl start screwing? Give her credit card for Bendel’s. Why they all buy clothes at Bendel’s? Who knows? But you show wife bill, then she screw you for keep it coming. That is only way to get married Jewish girl in bed.”

  Moodrow grinned widely. “You’re not gonna tell me you don’t have something on the side.”

  The Greek returned Moodrow’s grin. A mistress was a cultural necessity for many successful Greek entrepreneurs. “Hostess is partner’s niece.” He threw Moodrow a broad wink. “She is nice girl from good family, but very poor. I give her job.” He shrugged. “She is naturally grateful.”

  Moodrow, who’d heard much worse stories, slid the sketches out of his raincoat pocket and laid them by the cash register. “Say, George,” he said, his voice warm and friendly, “why don’t you take a look at this here. I’m looking real hard for these people. They’re very bad, George. Very bad.”

  “This one I know,” Halulakis said, holding up the sketch of Effie Bloom. “She has come here many times. Usually in morning.”

  Moodrow was startled by the Greek’s response as Hassan Fakhr had been when George Bradley passed the sketches across the car. For a moment, he couldn’t say anything, then he managed to grunt a response. “When? When did you see her?”

  “Three days before. I throw her out. Every morning she come for change for taking bus. Must have exact change for bus and I give, but she doesn’t buy. Never. Not even coffee and her damn face so mean you think she have sandpaper in Kotex. Finally I ask nice, “Why you never buy, Miss? Always change. Why you no buy?”

  “You know what she say? She say, ‘I hope your cock fall off. As you pull it from father’s ass.’ This you no can forget.”

  “How sure are you?” Moodrow could not keep the growing excitement out of his voice.

  “I call waiter. Theos, come here.” A tall, slender waiter detached himself from the fruit salad and walked across the restaurant. “You see this woman
before?”

  “Sure,” the man said evenly. “That’s the woman who said that thing about you.” He began to laugh. “You shoulda seen your face.”

  “Enough from my face. Look at these.” He passed the sketches of Johnny and Theresa to the waiter. “You are more in restaurant with customers. You know from them?”

  “I’ve seen ’em around. Just once in awhile. But never with the crazy one that cursed you out.”

  “When do they come in?” Moodrow asked.

  “Usually breakfast, but not too often. The other one I see almost every morning. She goes to the 7-Eleven for change now. I was in there this morning for razor blades and I was kidding around with the counter girl about it.” He held up Effie’s picture. “I think this one likes girls more than men.” He winked and returned to his work.

  Moodrow put his arm on George Halulakis’ shoulder. There was no fantasy, no Rita, left in his mind. He was filled with purpose, utterly joyous. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said. “Do me a favor and keep this between us. I been waiting a long time.”

  22

  LEONORA HIGGINS KNEW THAT everything had changed before Moodrow had time to walk from the diner entrance to his car at the curb. His stride was too rapid and slightly unsteady, as if he was being pushed to go faster than he wanted, and he drove, (again too fast) directly to the precinct house on Juniper Valley Road. He left his car double-parked and walked quickly through the metal doors, just pausing to flash his badge at a patrolman inquiring about the old Buick. Higgins wanted to call after him, to demand that he share his knowledge with her as she’d shared all his days of looking, but she contented herself with his back as the doors closed behind him, knowing that invisibility was the price of her ticket to this particular show.

  Inside, Moodrow found Victor Drabek and explained that he was looking for the chief of the undercover squad. Without asking questions, Drabek led him to a small, sweaty, black cop, John Anderson, in the precinct weight room. Introductions were made and Drabek went back to work.