Forced Entry

by Stephen Solomita

  “How?” Tilley finally asked. “You don’t even know right now what’s happening out there.”

  Moodrow ignored him. “Where’d they come from? Why’d two street dealers pick a neighborhood where there’s hardly any customers? They couldn’t have come from the streets because the action around there is almost nonexistent and what does take place, takes place behind closed doors, in the bars or the apartments. With this crew, the whores and the dealers, it was like they were out for publicity. It didn’t make sense and I should of seen it.” He paused for breath, looking over at Tilley, who was staring into his coffee. “Jim, I had the fuckers in that apartment. The dealers. I had them right there and I didn’t ask ’em where they came from. I didn’t ask who sent them. That Chinese kid was so scared he woulda given up his mother to stay out of the joint. And I didn’t even ask.”

  Tilley, looking up, tried to find a safe comment and then opted for the truth. “You should have asked,” he admitted. “You definitely should have asked.”

  Moodrow got up and went to the window again. He was looking for Betty, though he couldn’t help being impressed by the spring day unfolding outside his window. It was the first really warm day of the year and residents of the Lower East Side had abandoned their tenement apartments in favor of the streets. Radios blared. Children shouted. The dealers, who worked their corners in all weather conditions, shrugged off heavy jackets. “Looks like the homeless won’t have to worry about freezing anymore this year,” Moodrow observed. He forced the window open for the first time in weeks.

  “What?” Tilley asked.

  “It’s getting warm,” Moodrow said. “No more frozen bodies in the park.”

  Tilley refused to respond, bringing the conversation back to the point. “Ya know, you weren’t running the show out there. What makes you think Sylvia would have installed an alarm in the bedroom, based on your suspicions?”

  Moodrow didn’t hear the question. He turned away from the window, crossing the room to take his chair again. “When they lowered Rita’s body down, I wanted to get in with her. It wasn’t that I couldn’t face the pain. I was having trouble with the anger. As long as I kept the anger, I didn’t have to face the pain, but I knew there was a chance the anger might get out of control. That I could use it on the wrong people. So I pretended that I needed the anger to make sure Rita’s killers were punished. I pretended Rita needed revenge, but I knew, when they put her down in that hole, she was gone forever.”

  “And what about Sylvia? Does she need revenge?”

  “With Rita, I was the one who needed revenge. I had to do it personally, because I was in love with her, but I only knew Sylvia well enough to be sure she didn’t deserve to die that way. As for what I want to do—right now the best thing I could do for Sylvia is to save the building. And to get whoever did this to her. The one who set the fire and the one who ordered it.” Moodrow suddenly straightened in his chair, taking up a working posture. “Tell me what you think’s going on out there?” he demanded.

  “The first thing that sticks out,” Tilley responded eagerly, “is the coincidence that drugs and whores came in right after the building changed hands. But let’s pretend that it was just a coincidence. No connection whatsoever. Then I’d say that some major dealer is trying to expand by setting up small-time dealers in a neighborhood where he won’t have to fight to keep his turf. The big dealers have a very hard time expanding in neighborhoods where drugs are sold on every corner. In those neighborhoods, you gotta kill to grow. Also there’s a lot of dealers who think that anyone who tries crack, from derelict to chief executive, is gonna get hooked. I don’t agree a hundred percent, but, from that point of view, it makes sense to jump into a clean territory. The second possibility is that the new landlord and the problems are connected. There’s plenty of instances of landlords hiring goons to empty out buildings, so it wouldn’t be a rare phenomenon, even if it doesn’t usually happen in neighborhoods as clean as Jackson Heights. It’s also possible that the landlord is personally into drugs. Crack dealers have lots of money to invest and just maybe a middle-level pusher figured a way to make his investment pay off double. When you think about it, the neighborhoods that go bad in New York go bad one block at a time. If this building and a few others turned into real horror shows, some of the small homeowners might try to get out while property values are still high. I don’t think it would work, but that doesn’t mean someone couldn’t be giving it a try.”

  “You forgot about the arson,” Moodrow interrupted. “What kinda drug dealer uses a professional torch?”

  “If it was arson,” Tilley returned quietly.

  “It was definitely arson.”

  “I admire your hunches, Stanley. You got more street sense than anyone I know and you’re probably right. But I’m a cop and I took an oath not to believe anything until I had evidence. If there was no smoking gas can, then I gotta hold off on making any conclusions.”

  Moodrow got up and walked back to the window, pulling the curtain aside to look up the block. “I wish they’d get here,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “The people I invited to help me with the investigation.”

  “What’s the rush?” Tilley asked, repressing the urge to ask who they were. He’d find out soon enough. “You’re not just sitting around. We’re working here.”

  “When they come I’ll know the funeral’s over,” Moodrow explained without turning around.

  Tilley, surprised by the answer, found himself wishing for a cigarette, despite having given them up when he was eighteen. He didn’t want the cigarette to smoke; he wanted to play with it. To light it, to move it through his fingers. Again, he searched for a reply, but could find none. Moodrow’s revelations, though intensely personal, were delivered so matter-of-factly that ordinary sympathy was out of the question. What could he say: “Gee, Stanley, I’m real sorry you have trouble handling funerals”? Finally, he settled for a change of subject.

  “You say you don’t need to get revenge for Sylvia, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You fucked up in Jackson Heights. No doubt about it. You walked around that building with your head up your ass and maybe you think the only way you can pull your head out is to get the mutts responsible. Maybe you want revenge to make your fuck-up right.”

  Moodrow turned away from the window, crossing the room to stand over Tilley. He was enormous, a huge block of a man whose square, flat body mirrored his habitual lack of expression. “The thing that’s bothering me right now,” he said, “is that I’m happy to be in a real investigation again. Since I retired, I’ve been doing little pieces of work. One or two day jobs that turn out to be all legwork. For a long time I’ve wanted to be in deep, and now I am.”

  SEVENTEEN

  LEONORA HIGGINS WAS THE first to arrive. An old friend of both Moodrow and Tilley, she hugged each in turn, then held Moodrow at arm’s length. “Damn, Stanley,” she said, “you’re even more rumpled than when you were a cop.”

  Moodrow smiled for the first time that day. “And what about you?” He pointed to her outfit. “You got no business draggin’ that Vogue bullshit down to this neighborhood.”

  Leonora, an Assistant District Attorney who ordinarily dressed in tailored navy business suits, performed an obliging twirl. “It’s the new me,” she declared. “What do ya think?”

  She was wearing a white cotton tank top over cotton pants that rose almost to her breasts and a white duster that hung to her ankles. The effect was made even more startling by her dark brown skin and a coarsely woven tribal scarf in the brightest shades of red, orange, and blue.

  “You look uptown,” Moodrow said flatly. “You always dressed a little uptown, but now you’re doing the penthouse.”

  Leonora, frowning, poured herself a cup of coffee and took a seat at the kitchen table. “Screw you, Stanley. I knew you when you were nuts.” She added milk and sugar to the coffee and stirred it slowly. “They’re talking District Attorney for me,
Stanley. Serious people. I’m on my way to a dinner party after we get finished here. With the kind of people who make District Attorneys.”

  “Congratulations. With a little luck, you may get to prosecute me someday.” Moodrow turned away. His contempt for administrators came as no surprise to either Higgins or Tilley. “The only thing you could do with a fucked-up system,” he continued, “is once in a while stuff something decent through the cracks. Most everything you do as a cop just feeds the bullshit politicians. It doesn’t do shit about crime and it doesn’t make the people any safer. But when you get to be a Commissioner or a District Attorney all the cracks disappear. Then you’re just a slave to the same vultures who’ve been eating this city for two hundred years.”

  Higgins smiled. Moodrow’s reaction was expected, but it stung, nevertheless. Curious…the names of the people pushing her to make a run could be found on the pages of New York’s newspapers almost everyday. Why should she look to this old dinosaur for approval?

  “Do you know about the fire and what’s going on in Jackson Heights?” Tilley asked diplomatically.

  Leonora shook her head and Moodrow went through the history of the Jackson Arms, from the change of ownership to the smoky fire that had killed Sylvia Kaufman. When he’d finished, she took his hand and apologized for her flippant mood.

  “Forget about it,” Moodrow said. “Tell me what you make of the murder.”

  “Are you talking about the woman who died in the fire?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “What makes you think it was murder?”

  “It was murder.” Moodrow, obviously annoyed at this second challenge to his instincts, was sharp, but not sharp enough to intimidate his old friend.

  “Don’t bullshit me, Stanley,” she replied evenly. “If any cop had the nerve to bring this to my office looking for warrants, I’d laugh him all the way back to the precinct.”

  “Look, Leonora,” Moodrow insisted, “don’t worry about the proof. I didn’t call you here because I want some kind of a warrant. I wanna find out who owns three buildings on a quiet block in Jackson Heights. Now I plan to speak personally to the management company and the lawyer who’s representing the landlord, but I have grave doubts the prick from the management is gonna tell me anything and talking to lawyers is like howling at the moon. In other words, I’m gonna make the effort, but most likely I’m just wasting time. On the other hand, I also know that landlords have to register with HPD. That’s the city, right? Housing Preservation and Development? And I also think there’s some new state agency that registers base rents for apartments. I was hoping you might be able to tap into these departments. See what’s in the files.”

  Higgins grinned (as did Tilley) with admiration. “You always were a practical son of a bitch,” she observed. “Even after Rita, you did all the logical things. Sure, it wouldn’t be any trouble at all for me to pull the files. I could do HPD tomorrow and probably get to DHCR within a couple of days. The Department of Housing and Community Renewal. That’s the state agency that watches the city agency that watches the landlords get rich.” She burst out laughing. “This isn’t really funny, but it shows how hard it is to stop the decay. There was a building I was involved with on Pitt Street, right here on the Lower East Side. A landlord named Furman bought it for $300,000, and two weeks later the back wall started to collapse. The landlord wouldn’t make repairs, so the tenants took it to Housing Court, whereupon the judge ordered an inspection. The inspector told the court the wall could go at any minute, so the judge issued a vacate order that made every tenant homeless. Still, the tenants didn’t give up. They went back into Housing Court to force the landlord to repair the building. The Housing Judge ruled for the tenants (despite the landlord’s claim that it would cost more than he paid for the building to put it back in shape), but the landlord appealed to the Appellate Court, a process that ate up about nine months, during which the empty building continued to fall apart. Finally, two weeks before the Appellate Court affirmed the lower court ruling, there were six separate fires and the roof collapsed. Now it’s an empty lot waiting for gentrification.”

  Betty Haluka arrived next, along with Sergeant Paul Dunlap. She’d lost both her parents years before; Sylvia Kaufman was all that remained of her childhood. Instinctively, she allowed herself to be wrapped in Stanley Moodrow’s arms for a moment, then pulled away. His arms were enormous; they enclosed her completely and she was afraid that if she stayed in them for more than a moment, she would never have the courage to come out. When she pulled away, though, she was dry-eyed.

  “Are you sure you want to go ahead with this?” Moodrow asked.

  “More than anything,” she replied. “There’s really nothing else for me to do.”

  Moodrow, his face neutral, introduced Dunlap to Tilley and Higgins. Leonora smiled briefly on learning that Betty worked for Legal Aid. As an Assistant DA, most of the lawyers she faced in court worked for Legal Aid. To some extent, no matter how civilized the contest, the participants in an adversary proceeding are bound to look at each other as competitors. “Where do you work?” she asked.

  “I’ve been working with the Prisoners’ Rights Project for the last six months. We’re trying to do something about Rikers Island.”

  Rikers Island, which lies right next to LaGuardia Airport in Queens, contains seven separate jails, and houses more than 18,000 prisoners. A federal judge named Morris Lasker had called it one of the most violent jails in America and various reform groups had been trying to change it for years.

  “That’s probably why I haven’t run into you,” Leonora returned. “I’ve been doing a lot of work in Manhattan recently.”

  Moodrow, who recognized the natural antagonism, but knew it wouldn’t interfere with his plans (there was no chance he’d let it interfere), turned his attention to Paul Dunlap. Dunlap was an NYPD sergeant, while he, Moodrow, was a retired cop with a private investigator’s license. There was no reason to suppose that Dunlap would submit to Moodrow’s authority, but Moodrow had already decided to dump him in favor of Jim Tilley if he refused.

  “Did you go to the captain?” Moodrow asked. Shaking Dunlap’s hand, he was surprised to find it nearly as big as his own.

  “Yeah,” Dunlap returned, careful to keep his voice matter-of-fact even though he was bursting with excitement. It was like being let out of prison. “The captain wants to treat it like a homicide. At least until the fire marshal says otherwise. It seems the pastor over at St. Ann’s has been calling him three times a day about the troubles in the Jackson Arms.”

  It had been Moodrow’s idea, but Dunlap had carried it through. Though he had little experience with crime, Dunlap knew every priest, reverend, and rabbi in the One One Five. St. Ann’s pastor, Father John Casserino, though by no means a drunk or anything close to it, had a certain fondness for Scotch whiskey and the company of Community Affairs Officer Paul Dunlap, who regaled him with fabricated stories of rapes and robberies and murders. So it was no trouble for Father John, who’d been listening to complaints about the Jackson Arms from a number of parishioners, to put a bug in Precinct Commander George Serrano’s ear about the same time Porky Dunlap wandered into Serrano’s office, humbly requesting that he be allowed to follow up on the suspicious fire on 37th Avenue. Since “follow up,” in Serrano’s estimation, meant no more than waiting for the fire marshal’s report, the Precinct Commander had readily agreed.

  “You wanna play cops and robbers, Dunlap?” Serrano had burst out laughing.

  “It’s not that, Captain. It’s just that I know some of the people there…”

  “Say no more, Dunlap. It’s your case. I spoke to the fire marshal about an hour ago and he’ll be at the scene tomorrow morning. Adios, and don’t miss no speeches.”

  The final member of Moodrow’s task force arrived ten minutes later. Short, immensely barrelchested, his dark hair glistening, Jorge Rivera nodded shyly to the others. As a tenant of the Jackson Arms, he had as much right to
be there as any of the others, but, as usual in the presence of native-born Americans, he found himself tongue-tied.

  “George,” Moodrow said, automatically Anglicizing Rivera’s first name, “lemme introduce you to my friends.” After the handshakes and the smiles, he continued, addressing the whole group. “I spoke to George Rivera yesterday and he’s agreed to act as our contact with the other tenants. I picked him because he does volunteer work, which is to say that he’s an active man. As opposed to most people who only exercise their mouths. Now I know it’s too soon after the fire and I’m supposed to wait until people recover, but I don’t think we have the time. Not that I’m saying I know what’s going on, because I don’t, but I’m sure that there’s no random happenings here. Somebody’s got a longterm plan and that somebody has a big headstart on us. If we wait even a few days, the fire marshal is gonna bury his report, along with every bit of evidence from the fire scene. This is also true for the evictions that went out last week. They’ll be moving into court while we cry into our hankies. I don’t like to put it so hard, but that’s what I think is happening.”

  It was Betty’s place to affirm or deny Moodrow’s speech, and she affirmed it without a second thought. “My role here, as I see it,” she began, her voice strong, her eyes fixed on Moodrow, “is to try to slow down the deterioration within the building. As soon as we can get together a tenants’ petition, I’ll start an HP action in Tenant-Landlord Court. The judge will order an inspection and, when the report comes back, follow up with whatever repairs are needed. That’ll get us started. Hopefully, with Mr. Rivera…”

  “Jorge,” Rivera broke in, pronouncing it Hor-hay, with the accent on the first syllable. “Please.”

  “If Jorge can give me some help, I’ll interview any tenant who’s received an eviction notice. I’ve been temporarily transferred to Legal Aid’s Tenant-Landlord division, small as it is, and I’ll be able to stay there indefinitely. Plus, I’ll have the use of a paralegal who’s familiar with the field. I spoke to him yesterday, right after Stanley called me. His name is Innocencio Kavecchi. He told me that we can start an action in Supreme Court instead of Housing Court. It’s possible, though unlikely, the judge will issue an injunction ordering the landlord to stop harassing the tenants if the eviction notices—they’re called dispossess notices, actually; eviction notices come after the judge makes a decision—are completely without foundation. Either way, it’ll serve to let all interested parties know that we intend to fight.”