Forced Entry

by Stephen Solomita

  “Don’t enjoy yourself too much, Stanley,” Betty said as they entered the building. “If they charge him with manslaughter, he’s gonna have to fight.”

  Moodrow’s reply was interrupted by the cheers of the tenants packed into the hallway. The lobby, on the other hand, was packed with patrolmen who demonstrated their reluctance to let the pair through by closing ranks.

  “Moodrow.”

  They turned to find Captain George Serrano walking toward them. Not surprisingly, he ignored the Legal Aid attorney in favor of the ex-cop. “I just want to talk to you for a minute before you go in,” he said, as soon as he was close enough to speak confidentially. “I heard you were a cop. Thirty-five years.”

  “I don’t see the point,” Moodrow replied quickly. He’d never had any love for the brass. “I’m a private investigator now and Mike is my client.”

  “For Christ’s sake, man,” Serrano continued. “Let’s find a way to get him out of there. We don’t wanna bust heads. These are civilians, not criminals. Besides, I think the perp was already dead when Mike put the bullet in his back.”

  “So this whole thing is a fucking farce?”

  “You know the job as well as I do,” Serrano insisted. “We’re going to make an arrest today. Hell, you’re lucky the perp wasn’t black. If he was black, I’d have to shoot my way through the door.”

  “I’m glad you told me that,” Moodrow replied, already walking away. “I’m glad to hear you’re doing me a favor.”

  Moodrow plucked Jorge Rivera and Andre Almeyda from the assembled tenants before entering Birnbaum’s apartment, advising the others to keep their cool. “Don’t say anything to make the cops mad. Nothing. Remember, they’re not the enemy.”

  Inside, they found Mike and Paul Reilly calmly playing gin rummy, the gun on the table between them. “Did we get a little bit even?” Mike demanded of Betty. His face was still swollen, the bruises faintly visible.

  “You got stupid is what you got,” Betty returned evenly.

  “For killing a gonif? Killing a gonif is a mitzvah, in case you hadn’t heard.”

  “You wanna talk about it in front of witnesses?” Betty said firmly. “I work for Legal Aid, so I usually don’t get to pick my clients, but when I do get the chance, I try to stay away from stupid ones. From this minute, you don’t talk to anyone about the shooting, but me. I swear, Mike, if you wanna act like a schnorrer and go brag to all your neighbors what a big hero you are, I’ll dump you and you’ll have to go out and pay someone to represent you.”

  Mike flinched at Betty’s assault and when he spoke, his voice was much softer. “How much time have I got before they arrest me?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Hours, probably.”

  “Do you think you could fix it so I get busted before my daughter gets here? She’s on her way from New Jersey.”

  Betty and Moodrow broke out laughing, while the three tenants just looked confused.

  “That’s great,” Mike said, “but if you knew my daughter, you wouldn’t think this was comedy.”

  Betty, still chuckling, drew Mike off into the kitchen where she could listen privately to his rendition of the events leading to the demise of Talker Purdy. Moodrow stayed in the living room with the three tenants. He began by explaining the deal they were trying to work out regarding Mike’s arrest, a deal which seemed perfectly satisfactory to the trio, as long as Mike went along with it. Despite their defiant stance, they were all subscribers to the American dream, and fighting cops didn’t come naturally to any of them. Not even Andre Almeyda, who’d once been arrested by Castro’s police and held as a subversive for the better part of a week. As soon as Moodrow made it clear that Mike would not have to be locked up with them, each breathed a private sigh of relief.

  “But the big thing, from your point of view,” Moodrow continued, “is that there’s cameras coming and you have to decide who’s gonna represent the tenants. This is a big opportunity for you to put your case out where people can see it. The bureaucrats and the cops hate publicity. Publicity brings phone calls from angry politicians who demand action. But you gotta be prepared when you talk to the reporters. You have to know exactly what you want to say and you have to say it without slandering the landlord or the cops. Also, whoever you pick is gonna be the media’s permanent contact, so you have to get it right the first time.”

  “And how should we do this?” Andre Almeyda asked.

  “First, decide who’s going to represent you, then we’ll go over what to say.”

  “A moment, por favor,” Jorge Rivera said. “But I think we should have the others here. Jimmy Yo and Muhammad Assiz and Mrs. Bonnastello.” He turned to Andre Almeyda. “And perhaps your wife, Andre.”

  Rivera projected the perfect image. Naturally dignified, his large, round face, topped by jet-black hair, was nearly always composed. He smiled as rarely as he frowned. His accent, not so strong as to impede communication, would remind viewers that he was an immigrant, a hardworking man preyed upon by forces beyond his control while stronger forces (the cops, mainly, but also the landlord and the courts) stood by indifferently. Jorge was the perfect helpless victim and that’s the way the association decided to play it. Rather than blame specific individuals, they would plead helplessness and demand police action.

  Mike Birnbaum’s affairs went equally well. After two hours of phone calls, George Serrano, Precinct Commander, managed to get permission to have Birnbaum—accompanied by two patrol sergeants, but without handcuffs—admitted to Physician’s Hospital, a few blocks away. One of the sergeants would take him through the booking procedure, photograph and fingerprint him. A judge would arrive by evening to handle the arraignment, after which he would be allowed to return home. If, as Serrano believed, Talker Purdy had completed his transformation from moron to corpse as soon as Mike’s second shot had penetrated the back of his skull, all the charges, with the exception of the gun possession, would be dismissed. And no judge in his right mind would endanger his career by sentencing an eighty-year-old Jew to hard time—probation on the gun charge was politically mandatory.

  The actual operation went smoothly. The tenants in the hallway left as soon as the deal was explained to them and the sergeants led the diminutive Mike Birnbaum into a wall of exploding flashbulbs and screaming reporters. Birnbaum remembered his instructions from Betty (“If you say one word to the reporters, I swear I’ll testify at your incompetency hearing. I’ll see that you’re sent to New Jersey with your daughter”). He kept a dignified silence, walking, eyes front, directly to the ambulance waiting outside the building and, with the help of the two sergeants, climbed inside.

  A few minutes later, Moodrow escorted Jorge Rivera (who introduced himself to reporters as George Rivera) to a prearranged interview with a CBS reporter, then listened attentively while Rivera presented the tenants’ case by enumerating the various attacks on their way of life: the fire, the drugs, the muggings, the prostitutes. The message intended for viewers was simple: if it can happen to us, it can happen to you.

  Moodrow hadn’t been at a crime scene involving reporters for a long time, and he was engrossed in the manic lunacy, when Paul Dunlap tapped him on the shoulder.

  “I gotta talk to you a minute,” he said. “Let’s go where it’s quieter.” Without further comment, he led Moodrow outside and across the street. “First,” he said, “I wanna say that I hope you didn’t take no offense over what happened this morning.”

  “No offense,” Moodrow replied. “I haven’t been out so long I don’t remember the line: ‘You take the man’s money, you do the man’s job.’ ”

  “Good. I’m glad to hear that, because it looks as if the captain is gonna keep the case open. We finally got the report on the vials and the needles from the print man.” Dunlap noted Moodrow’s double take, enjoying it thoroughly. It pleased him no end to see Moodrow caught off guard for a change. “At least we know it was arson,” Dunlap said as he took the forensics report from his jacket pocket, con
sulting it to maintain accuracy as he went along. Like most cops, he felt most comfortable when he was dealing with quantities. “Okay, twelve syringes were recovered at the scene. Two were burnt. Four had multiple prints and smudges. Six were wiped clean. There were twenty-one crack vials recovered. Eight had multiples and thirteen were clean. Same with the dope envelopes and rest of the paraphernalia. A few multiples, but most of it wiped.”

  “Good,” Moodrow said, his mind already wandering in search of a theory. “The arsonist made a mistake. He should have worn gloves when he gathered up the decoy paraphernalia, but he didn’t and he had to wipe the material down.”

  “But you were wrong,” Dunlap said gleefully, “about the mattress belonging to the old superintendent. There must have been junkies down there before the arsonist.”

  “What does it matter?” Moodrow replied evenly. “The arsonist was clever. He took advantage of existing conditions to set up his smokescreen. If he’d been a little more careful, Serrano would’ve closed out the case and I would’ve lost you—which wouldn’t have stopped me, anyway. But he fucked it up. He made one mistake…”

  “What if he made more than one mistake?” Dunlap asked, chuckling.

  “C’mon, Paulie, don’t bust my balls.” Moodrow, who’d lost the routine right to use the enormous resources of the NYPD, wasn’t crazy about Dunlap’s teasing. Nevertheless, as he and Betty had been busting Dunlap’s (and, by extension, the NYPD’s) balls all morning, he could understand the justice in it. “Awright,” Dunlap grinned. “I told you there were thirteen clean vials. That wasn’t true. There were only twelve clean vials. One of the clean ones had a single print, an itty, bitty pinky print, very sharp and clear, right below the cap.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  April 18

  THE ABSOLUTELY BEST THING about whores, according to Marek Najowski, was the indisputable fact that they didn’t desire their customers. For instance, Marie, the black whore scrubbing his kitchen, actually hated him; he could feel the hatred rolling off her, as real as the sweat that rolled between her breasts while he fucked her. Whenever he had the time, he made her work until she was drenched with sweat. Until, hoping to get it over with, she surrendered her body eagerly. She was allowed to leave after he came. That was part of their deal and Marek, knowing how much she wanted to hear the door close behind her (how much she wanted to be free of him) liked to begin caressing her, to kneel beside her while she worked and run his fingers over the backs of her legs for a few moments, then return to his chair without explanation. Probably, she didn’t know how excited he was. Either that or she was too professional to rush him.

  “Marie, stop cleaning and come over here a minute, please.” Marek’s voice was deliberately calm, almost caressing.

  “Yessir.”

  He chuckled at her eagerness. She knew (all puns intended) that the endgame was coming. When she was standing quietly in front of him, he made a gesture with the palms of his hands and she casually lifted the hem of her skirt above her waist.

  “You know, Marie, I was reading in the paper the other day about a woman who boiled her baby. She was an impoverished Negro. Like you. Authorities say she was trying to get the devil out of her baby’s soul. What do you think about that?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I don’t know about those things.”

  “Oh, you must, Marie. Didn’t you grow up in that world? Didn’t your mother beat you? Doesn’t George Wang punish you when you’re bad?”

  “Yessir,” Marie whispered, as if the information were being drawn against her will. “My momma did beat me.”

  Marek shook his head, chuckling softly. There was nothing they wouldn’t do for money. “Move your legs a little further apart,” he ordered, noting that she followed his instructions without changing expression. That was the one thing she had going for her—her control. She never lost control.

  “Why did your momma beat you, Marie?”

  “She beat me because I was bad.”

  “Isn’t that why the Negro boiled her baby?”

  “Yessir.”

  Casually, suppressing a yawn, he put his right hand between her legs and caressed her with his index finger, gently running it between the lips of her sex. She sighed, of course, but Marek knew her passion came from relief, not desire. She couldn’t wait to get rid of him.

  She was wet, though. She was always moist by the time he got around to the sex and that was pretty amazing. It was like trying to get an erection with a woman who didn’t turn you on. Maybe she did what he would do in that situation. Maybe she closed her eyes and dropped off into fantasy. Maybe she dreamed of an enormous black cock laying against a black thigh…

  “Have I ever told you how grateful I am? How much I owe you and your momma and the woman who boiled her baby?” Marek heard the breathiness in his voice. He wouldn’t be able to draw it out much longer.

  “No, sir.”

  “You’ve heard of ‘the top of the heap’? It’s a cliché, of course. Even Frank Sinatra sings about it. According to rumor, life at the top is so beautiful that people who get there refuse to consider what they’re standing on. They never, for instance, think they’re standing on poor, little Marie. I guess that’s because their eyes have been riveted to the top for so long they can’t look down anymore. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know about that, sir.”

  This time he pushed inside her and she groaned a little louder, her knees trembling slightly. He was tempted to dig his finger into her inner flesh, to break the careful pattern of the charade. Instead, he pressed his lips to her belly, licking at the top of her tightly curled pubic hair.

  “But that’s what you do when you’re on top. You press down on whatever’s below you. On all the human beings who want to take your place. I’ll never know what it’s like to be on the bottom, Marie. That’s why I keep you around. To remind myself of the absolute depths, of all the alternatives to the life I intend to lead.”

  Marek allowed his thoughts to drift momentarily. The middle class, he knew, tried to avoid the boiling heap of struggling human beings by maintaining an illusion. They disavowed any claim to the top, using their money to create an artificial island of calm. All they wanted was escape and sometimes they achieved it. Sometimes they managed to live their whole lives in the eye of the storm. And sometimes the eye moved on, unpredictable as a hurricane, and they were smashed by the winds.

  What had the two hundred and forty families living on his property done to deserve him? (What did anybody do to deserve anything?) Most people thought of the “top of the heap” as a place of delicate balance, but people really survived there by crushing anyone threatening to break into the light. The people in Jackson Heights looked at inner city footage every night on their TV sets. They enjoyed the violence the way peeping toms enjoy sex. They never thought the violence would come out to them. Just like they never expected sickness or addiction or child abuse or any of life’s sharper realities.

  “Lie down on the floor and pull your legs up,” he ordered. He was angry now, thinking about the tenants’ association and the problems it was causing him. “You could probably take on a rhinoceros without feeling a thing, but for what it’s worth, I hope you walk bowlegged for a week.”

  The whore, Marek decided as he dressed, was a definite good luck charm. He’d had her before every meeting with Martin Blanks and the partners hadn’t had a problem yet. The meeting he was heading for that evening was particularly important. It had been set up at the last minute, an emergency meeting called to formulate a response to the negative events surrounding Mike Birnbaum’s arrest. It was their first setback and Marek was anxious to see how Blanks would take it. It would also be his first visit to Blanks’ home and he supposed that had to be considered an honor. Certainly it meant they’d reached a higher level of trust, which was just what he wanted.

  Marek went through his closets carefully. He needed a look that wouldn’t be totally out of place at a dealer’s pad, that wouldn’t offen
d. (He absolutely did not want to appear to patronize Marty Blanks, who wouldn’t appreciate that at all.) Finally, he chose a pair of stone-washed Wrangler jeans, a $70 off-white cotton dress shirt, and a pair of custom-made lizard-skin boots he’d picked up at a convention in Amarillo, Texas. A carefully rumpled lamb’s wool-and-cashmere jacket (a lustrous, dark-gray beauty he’d pulled off the rack at Barney’s for a miraculous $350) completed his wardrobe. He admired himself for a minute, then took his wallet and the change from his pants pocket and put them in the right-hand pocket of his jacket. The bulge they made was properly casual.

  “Lookin’ good, Mikey,” he said, smoothing his hair. But he wasn’t really looking so good. Mike Birnbaum’s vigorous self-defense was creating a number of problems for Bolt Realty. The biggest involved a state law which allowed for the seizure of drug-infested buildings if the landlord wasn’t making a “sincere effort” to evict known dealers. The tenants (no, not the tenants—the bitch and her giant companion) were pushing the issue with the fat cop from the 115th Precinct and he was offering a list of dealers apartments to the narcotics unit. Several days ago, Marek had decided that Bolt Realty would have to postpone its goals for the time being. They would have to cooperate.

  Marek’s driver, sent by Martin Blanks to guide him through the hell of Hell’s Kitchen, showed up exactly at seven-thirty, so punctual that Marek suspected he’d arrived early and parked in front of the house. He led Marek to a nondescript Buick sedan (Marek, in his more fanciful moments, had envisioned a stretch Mercedes for Martin Blanks) and held the door while Marek got inside.

  “My name’s Mike Powell,” the chauffeur said as he pulled the car into the traffic heading toward the Brooklyn Bridge. “I work for Marty Blanks. I known him since we were little. We was foster kids in the same family for about two years.”