A Twist of the Knife

by Stephen Solomita

  “If you bullshit me,” he said evenly, “you’re gonna think burning up’s a fuckin’ bubble bath.”

  23

  HE TOOK HER OVER it again and again. Until he was convinced she was telling the truth. He couldn’t make sense of it at first—five people working without direct help. Where were the Cubans? The Libyans? The Ayatollah? He dragged her through the Red Army’s history, from her first contact with Muzzafer in Algeria through the months of training and their entry into the United States (they had walked across the border from Canada, had, with the exception of Muzzafer, claimed American citizenship, their right to enter their own country), then over each separate operation, not even sparing himself the details of the Herald Square bombing. When he finally realized that the American Red Army consisted of five individuals (one of whom was already in custody) living together in a three-family home on an isolated street less than two miles from where he stood, he was hard put to stop himself from laughing out loud. He understood the genius of it: Living in isolation, there was little chance of discovery. But he also knew that no one can act outside the law forever, not while running the same act in the same location. Sooner or later, lines of persistence and coincidence would meet.

  “I hope you’re not lying,” he said for the tenth time. Effie said nothing. “’Cause if you’re lying, you’re in a lot of fucking trouble. See, first I’m gonna crosscuff your hands to your ankles, then I’m gonna gag you and lock you in the closet. You can’t live more than four days without water, so if I don’t come back, you’re gonna have a real dry death.”

  “I’m not lying.” Effie’s voice was flat, indifferent. She’d gotten up that morning, dressed and showered, took her breakfast and walked out the door—just an average day. She remembered, sitting against the wall, Moodrow’s face no more than ten inches from her own, that her sinuses had been swollen and she’d had a dull headache. Funny, all the pain was gone now, even the burning in her ribs, though her left ear continued to ring.

  “Tell me why there’s only five. Tell me that again.”

  “We were afraid of informants. Somebody ratting us out. Muzzafer said if he even let one other person know, they would get us eventually. That person would rat us out.”

  “Who gave you the guns?”

  “The Cubans.”

  “I thought you said you bought the guns?”

  “We bought them from the Cubans.”

  “Why did you just say the Cubans gave them to you?”

  “I meant we bought them with the money we got from Chadwick.”

  “Don’t ‘mean’ anything. Say what the truth is and don’t ‘mean.’” Moodrow allowed himself to shout, looking for some anger in Effie, something to indicate she had the strength to deliberately lie, but her voice remained soft. In every respect she was a woman resigned to her fate. “Who’s home right now?”

  “Jane Mathews and maybe Theresa.” As she pronounced Jane Mathews’ name, Effie felt a wave of nausea building. For a moment she thought she would throw up all over the cop, but it passed and she fell back into indifference. “Johnny’s expected by early afternoon.”

  “And the other one? Muzzafer?”

  “Later, but no special time. He doesn’t have to give a time.”

  “And what time are you expected?”

  “I told you already.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “I have a regular job. It’s cover. I get back at six.”

  “All right, let’s do the keys.” He held up the ring of housekeys taken from her purse. “Which keys fit which doors?”

  They went over it for another fifteen minutes before Moodrow made good on his promise to lock Effie in the closet. He was rough with her and she cried out in pain. Though he did not feel the slightest compassion, her need for medical attention was apparent even to Moodrow, who left her alive only on the small chance that she was lying and that he would need further information. If she was telling the truth, if he was successful in his hunt, he decided he would leave her here to die. To that end he rolled up the thin mattress and stuffed it on top of her in the closet. When he finished, she could barely breathe.

  He drove directly to the safe house on 59th Road, aware of the irony in that name. It was just as Effie described it, a row of attached, three-family brick buildings, painfully new, with the sod and the shrubbery, the tiny Japanese maple, looking as if they were planted yesterday. Though it was spring and most lawns were at their greenest, the grass in front of Muzzafer’s headquarters was a limp, dead yellow; clearly, the sod had not taken and would have to be relaid. Effie had explained the interior layout. Each floor held one apartment; a narrow, winding staircase (a furniture mover’s nightmare) led to individual, tiny landings. Theresa and Johnny Katanos lived on the third floor, Effie and Jane on the first with Muzzafer, the buffer, standing between them. There were tens of thousands of similar buildings in New York and Moodrow had been in dozens. There would be a living room with a kitchen big enough to hold a table, a large and a small bedroom, white-tiled bathrooms with small tubs and a laundry room in the basement next to the oil burner. The walls would be constructed entirely of plasterboard and once a month during the summer, a maintenance man would come to trim the shrubs and mow the grass. Complaints went to a management company that was as inefficient as it was indifferent, but in a new building there were few problems. In order to live in this splendor, the Red Army paid $3100 per month.

  Moodrow drove around the block three times, getting a feel for the situation. There were few people about, but he would have to be very careful. This was a residential block and strangers would be noticed. On the third pass he recognized Theresa Aviles, dragging a shopping cart filled with laundry. There was no laundry bag, which meant she would be doing the work herself, a two-hour task.

  That left Jane Mathews alone in the house. Investigations were strange voyages; the worst mistake was to force them to be predictable, to fit into preconceived notions of how they should go along. He’d trudged after this moment for weeks and nothing had happened. Now everything was going so smoothly it frightened him. It could not be this easy, he thought. There would have to be a problem somewhere. Of course, it never occurred to Moodrow that the problem might be Leonora Higgins one block away in her Plymouth, calmly chewing on a slice of buttered rye bread.

  Moodrow drove around the block again, passing Theresa as she made her way toward the laundromat on Fresh Pond Road. He considered taking her on the street, forcing her into the trunk of the car while he want after Jane Mathews. It would be very easy, but it wouldn’t make the basic problem—entering the house unobserved—any simpler. On the other hand, once safely inside, he could pick them off one at a time. He pictured the blonde Jane Mathews as Effie had described her, vacuuming the floors, making beds. The front windows, by the driveway, were uncovered and filled with plants. If Jane happened to be looking out as he came to the door, she would know something was wrong. Dressed as he was and big as he was, if she didn’t make him for a cop, she would take him for a criminal. There were automatic weapons in each apartment and, according to Effie Bloom, Jane knew how and was unafraid to use them.

  He finally parked halfway down the block and circled behind the last building in the row, finding a narrow alleyway leading to a series of back doors. Though they were almost never used, these rear entrances were mandated by city fire laws and led into the first floor kitchens. Moodrow passed by Jane’s door, than came in low from the back wall of the adjoining building. He listened for a moment outside the bedroom window, heard nothing, went to the door and listened once again. He was very calm, reaching into the gym bag for the shotgun, pressing it into his chest as he used Effie’s key to unlock the door. The mechanism, brand new, turned with a barely perceptible click.

  Nothing. The kitchen was quiet and dark. He reached for a clue to Jane’s position, a vacuum or television. Silence again, then a faint splash of water from down the hall, from the bathroom. Moodrow, the shotgun raised, eased down the hall
way, listening to the sounds of Jane Mathews at her bath. The door was partly open, another indication of how safe they all felt, and he went in without hesitating.

  “Morning, Jane,” he said, pushing the shotgun forward so that the barrels rested against her eyes. “All cleaned up and ready to go.” He made it a statement, not a question. She was a very attractive woman, slim and lithe, but her beauty didn’t reach Moodrow, not the spray of tan freckles across her small breasts, nor her white knees making little pyramids above the water.

  Jane was surprised beyond thought or speech, and very frightened, too. She sat in the tub, for almost a minute, surrounded by white foam, before it occurred to her that the giant with the shotgun wasn’t going to kill her on the spot.

  “You’re a cop,” she said, finally, her voice very small, very girlish.

  Moodrow neither saw nor heard her. He was hearing sirens—cops and ambulances flying up Sixth Avenue, choking the side streets. There was something he had to do. It was imperative. He tried to step down into the gutter and banged his leg on the side of the tub.

  For a moment he wondered where he was, then his free hand reached out, almost by itself, clamping down on Jane’s shoulder, yanking her out of the tub. Instinctively, Jane used her arms to cover herself; she could not imagine that, to Stanley Moodrow, she was utterly sexless.

  He went about his business routinely, as if engaged in a household task; he had to immobilize her, but he couldn’t kill her. He had dreamed it time and again. They were always together at the end, though the number varied, and he was explaining their mistakes in detail. He was explaining why a plan that kept federal agents befuddled was not proof against ordinary cop techniques. It was necessary that he explain it, at least to some of them.

  And to that end he dragged a passive Jane Mathews, still naked, into the kitchen and tied her to a chair with a combination of masking tape and two-inch elastic bandage. As he worked, his head and hands passed over her breasts, her legs, her lap, creating a scene that would, in the hands of a modern filmmaker, be extremely erotic. Moodrow, however, felt nothing.

  “Are you a cop? You’re a cop, right,” Jane murmured, unresisting. But if he was a cop, why was he taping her ankles to the legs of the chair?

  “Yeah, I’m a cop,” he said. She was completely bound and about to be gagged. “You believe that shit? A big, dopey cop and I just grabbed ahold of the American Red Army! Un-fucking-real. See, there’s this federal agent named George Bradley. A real big-time expert. He’s got about a hundred men workin’ for him and he’s pulling his dick. Imagine? A hundred fucking guys all went to college. Educated guys. See, you shouldn’t of killed Chadwick. That’s like neighborhood. You can’t get in and out of neighborhoods without leaving traces. Even if you wear gloves.

  “I hope you don’t mind my running off at the mouth like I’m doing. I’m a little nervous. I never actually killed five people. Not all at one time in one day.” As he spoke the last sentence, Moodrow felt a sudden rush of memory, an overpowering image of Rita on their first night together. They’d made love, violent love, for three hours, nearly destroying the bed. Afterwards, Rita had come out of the shower and was dressing for work while Moodrow, clothes on, sat by the edge of the bed, watching. Rita was nervous; she kept her back to him and only lifted her buttocks for an instant as she slid into her panties. Her modesty had tickled Moodrow. The bed reeked of their lust; she had been as abandoned as he.

  When he woke up, he found himself hidden behind the leaves of an immense spider plant, Jane’s pride and joy; he was sitting on a kitchen chair by the front window. The sun had come out for the first time in a week and with all the lights off, though his view along 59th Road was unimpeded, he was invisible from the street. Curiously, he did not examine the process which enabled him to find the perfect vantage point, which selected and carried the chair from the kitchen. Nor did he wonder why such a long-forgotten memory should suddenly come to the surface. There was nothing to worry about. He had thought it out so many times and it had always gone properly. There was no escape for them.

  “Say, Jane,” Moodrow called into the kitchen, “did I tell you who ratted? This’ll make you crazy. Your girlfriend did it. Yeah. Effie Bloom. She’s about twenty blocks away from here. In a closet. I told her I was gonna kill you and she ratted anyway. I think she must be mad at you guys. What do you think, Jane? Mad or scared?

  “I say she was scared. Sure. That’s because I was very rough with her. I didn’t mean it, but sometimes it gets that way. Not that I hit her too many times in the face. I didn’t want to break her jaw. I mean if I broke her jaw she couldn’t tell me anything, right?” He shrugged across to Jane, his eyes flicking briefly from the window to hers and to the window again. “And I needed someone to tell me where you were and everything about you. I mean if she didn’t tell me, I’d probably never find your hideout. She was hard to convince, but she told. She told plenty. I guess that proves it takes more than sucking pussy to make little girls tough.”

  Jane Mathews, fresh from her bath, was going through a transformation almost identical to that of Effie Bloom an hour before. The affair was finished. The litany of her crimes passed over her, and while she had no sense of having done wrong (it was all necessary, all of it), she could count up the bodies and multiply them by years in jail. The failure of her life with Effie, the impending loss of Johnny Katanos and Muzzafer, decades of isolation from prisoners eager to avenge dead relatives—all poured over Jane, like syrup over fruit. She did not even attempt to find a way to warn Theresa Aviles. Instead, she sat there and listened to Moodrow, listened without really hearing the words.

  “Hey, hey, hey. Look at this. Here she comes. And is she ever prompt. She must’ve left the laundry in the washer, ’cause…” His voice trailed off. The transition seemed as natural as in a dream. One moment he watched Theresa Aviles approaching her home and the next he was on Sixth Avenue and Rita was walking toward him, her full lips curled into a pout of annoyance. He found nothing strange in this. “Hey, listen,” he called out. “I’m sorry. I had to do a few things and I just couldn’t get out of them.” He shrugged, completely unaware of Jane Mathews across the room. “Tell me what you bought for me?”

  Then Theresa turned onto the concrete walk leading to the front door and Moodrow’s attention flipped once again. He stepped back into the shadows by the closed door to Effie and Jane’s apartment; he waited for Theresa to open the front door, waited for it to close and lock, waited until Theresa was poised on the landing, then ripped Jane’s door open and was on her before she was even aware of the danger. He overpowered her, like a wolf on a hare, yanking her into the room, holding her up against the wall, one hand wrapped around her throat, while he searched her for a weapon.

  Though she did not go through a transformation from aggressor to victim, as her sisters had done, Theresa was just as helpless as Jane had been. Her hands were cuffed behind her back; a few feet of tape tied them securely to the back of a chair, then her legs were pulled apart and taped, one to each leg of the chair and she was gagged immediately.

  Moodrow, resuming his seat behind the hanging green leaves of the plant, began to talk as soon as Theresa was firmly secured. “Good to see you, Theresa. Paco Baquili says to say hello. Remember Paco? He’s the one that should have died, but he turned up to give me pictures of you and Effie. It’s funny, but I knew you right away. I’ve seen you before. I saw you on Sixth Avenue with Effie. You was real mad with each other. You made her tits come out. That’s probably why she told me where you were.”

  They went on that way for the following two hours, Moodrow’s voice alternately teasing and threatening. It is common for cops and in some ways very necessary, especially after a very long chase, to twist the knife and Moodrow, a thirty-year veteran, was an expert. “Hey, listen up, ladies,” he said at one point, trying to extract every last measure of his revenge. “I think I figured out what I’m gonna do with you. I’m gonna burn you at the chair. Like the Indians used
to burn the white guys at the stake? Only we don’t have any stakes, so we’ll use chairs instead. I got a five-gallon can of gas right out in the car. Once you’re all together, I’ll tie you back to back, make a little circle with the gas and poooof. Off you go.” As he said this, he was overpowered by a smell of burning flesh and clothing, an odor of boiling asphalt so strong he gagged on it. He’d been pretending these glimpses of Rita were memories (though he knew they were not like ordinary remembering), but it was getting harder and harder to maintain the fiction. One moment he was watching the road, peering between the leaves of a potted plant and the next he was in a cellar with Rita and a small boy. He was trying to show her something, to demonstrate some great truth that would allow them to overcome all the small habits which kept them apart. If he could just communicate this one idea, he would not be alone. He would never be alone again.

  “Hey,” he continued. “I just gotta ask you this one question.” His eyes flicked over to the two women, then back to the window. They were dark and cold, in stark contrast to the stifled laughter in his voice. Theresa and Jane saw it and understood, as had Effie. They judged him to be insane which was exactly the effect he’d intended. “Didn’t you think even a little bit about the people? I’ve known plenty of killers. Sure. But they always had a reason for killing the person they killed. Like they wanted revenge or they did it for profit. Or they were just plain angry. You guys leave a package and walk away. You don’t know what bodies’ll be lyin’ around and you probably don’t care, neither.” He looked at them again, trying to read an answer in their eyes. Later, he decided, when they were all together, he would take the gags off and ask the questions again. Perhaps the order of their executions should be determined by their answers. He would not, of course, make good on his threat to set a fire. Fires had a way of spreading, of involving the innocent, and cops protect civilians. Even if they hate them.