“I said I didn’t want none.” Sheehan pointed to the second glass.
“Just in case,” Moodrow said. “So I won’t have to make two trips.” He poured three inches of vodka into his glass, then sipped speculatively. “This shit doesn’t have any taste to it. I like bourbon. Then I know I’m drinking something. It’s awful, but it’s there.”
“Why’d you come, Moodrow?”
“Look, I didn’t mean to bother you.” Now that the moment was at hand, Moodrow found himself reluctant to get started. Better, he decided, to let Sheehan push a little. “If I woulda known about Louis, I wouldn’t have come. At least not this soon.”
Sheehan sighed without looking up. “I owe you, Moodrow. No question about it. I owe you for makin’ ‘Louis feel a little bit easier. Most of the people in the world took one look at Louis and ran for the holy water. You treated him like any other human being. He laughed about it. No shit. Who could of believed that the last person, besides me and the nurse, who could stand being next to Louis would turn out to be a cop? That meant more than the favors.”
“It wasn’t any big deal,” Moodrow said. He was actually blushing. “Don’t make a big fucking thing out of it.”
“Tell me what you want, Moodrow.”
“I’m still trying to locate the people behind what happened here. I was wondering if you spoke to any of the dealers. You know…What we talked about last time I was in the apartment.”
“I talked to a few people, but I don’t have no answers for you. My sense is that most of ’em came from Hell’s Kitchen, but I couldn’t find out why they came. I didn’t get close enough to ask that kinda question. Maybe if I had more time…But they’re runnin’ for cover, now. Word’s out that the cops are gonna close the place down.”
“That’s definite,” Moodrow said. “The dealers are gonna get busted for criminal trespass and the buildings gonna be patrolled by street cops for the next couple of months.”
“I guess that’s it for me, too,” Sheehan said. “My name ain’t on the lease.”
“Don’t give up too soon.” Moodrow refilled his glass, then filled Sheehan’s. When he offered the drink, the younger man accepted it without comment. “Talk to the paralegal. What’s his name, again?”
“Kavecchi.” Sheehan twisted his face into a grimace. “That guy makes me crazy. He complains about everything.”
“Well, he also knows everything about housing. Between him and the fact that the landlord’s scared shitless, you might find a way to keep your apartment.” Moodrow hesitated momentarily, looking down at his hands. “There was one other thing I wanted to ask you about. We got the name of the scumbag who set the fire. The arsonist. We got it through a print he left behind, but we can’t find him. When I pulled his package, I noticed that he was up in Clinton the same time you were.”
“Yeah?” Sheehan, interested, sat up straight. “A white guy?”
“Right. Name of Maurice Babbit.”
“Babbit? No shit.”
“You knew him?” Moodrow couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice.
“ ‘Knew him’ is a little too strong for it. Babbit was a crazy and I kept as far away from the nuts as possible. You gotta remember there ain’t that many white people in the joint, so when you get one who’s crazy enough to set people on fire in their cells, you learn who he is before he torches your cell. Babbit got out two years before me.”
“That’s right. He’s off parole and we can’t find him.”
“You think I know where Babbit lives?”
“Actually, I don’t. I thought you might know people who were close to him. Maybe one of his buddies is on parole. It’d give me a way to go.”
Sheehan, sitting back in the chair, took his time considering the request. “I don’t think I could give you no names,” he finally said. “It’s too late in life to start rattin’ people out. If I knew where Babbit was, I’d tell ya, but if I give ya the names of guys who used ta be friends of mine and you go leanin’ on ’em…People been leanin’ on me and Louis for too long. Neighbors, parole officers, Medicaid doctors, emergency room nurses, landlords. I don’t want it on my conscience that I put you on someone who used to be my friend.”
“I’m not gonna lean on anyone.”
“Bullshit.”
Moodrow giggled, putting his hand to his mouth. “Yeah,” he admitted. “It’s bullshit. If I had to press someone to get to Babbit, I would. Still, if you’re sayin’ you know people who were close to Babbit, there’s gotta be a way we could do this.”
“There’s a way. There’s always a way. That’s why you came here.” Sheehan raised his head. “I’m not goin’ back to work for a week, because I ain’t got the heart for the packages and the traffic. Which means I got enough time to check it out. Ya know, Sylvia Kaufman’s face was the only face I could count on for a smile in this building. That would be reason enough to finger a crazy motherfucker like Maurice Babbit, even if I didn’t owe you, which I admit I do. Plus I gotta be doin’ somethin’ and right now it can’t be work.”
TWENTY-NINE
April 27
MAREK NAJOWSKI DECIDED NOT to use his competition rifle, a heavily customized Anschutz Super Match, because, despite its accuracy (“accuracy” wasn’t really strong enough for the half inch groupings he customarily shot), Marek couldn’t be certain the Anschutz’s .22 caliber ammo would kill Marty Blanks. Not from a hundred and twenty yards out; not when the target was moving. Better to use ammo guaranteed to cause massive damage. Even if you were off by an inch or two, the shock alone was enough to kill. There wasn’t that great a loss of accuracy, anyway. In fact, Marek had long felt that the Weatherby Mark V, fitted with a 2x-7x scope and a 26” barrel, should have its own competition. Even geared up to handle .458 Win. Mag. ammunition (enough to put down a charging elephant, though there wasn’t much of that anymore, either), the rifle, at two hundred yards, would shoot true in a hurricane. Of course, the competition would have to be very exclusive. How many people could afford a rifle of that quality? The Weatherby had cost him $4000. The inlay on the stock alone, parallel ivory triangles set deep in the French walnut, went for more than a thousand dollars.
Naturally, some people, especially assholes like Marty Blanks, would sneer at the bolt action Weatherby (“One shot at a time? You gotta be kiddin’ me”). But the sort of people who favored drive-by shootings with semiautomatic (or, God forbid, fully automatic) weapons had never interested Marek Najowski. Marek was too concerned with style; he was convinced that, without style, life would be completely unbearable. He’d seen a lot of pain in his time; he still touched it whenever he visited his mother. (He’d never get used to that, never.) The best response, as far as he was concerned, was an equal measure of stiff upper lip and all-out revenge.
Besides, drive-by shootings, perfect vehicles for the deliverance of terror, were part and parcel of Marty Blanks’ experience and, thus, protecting against a massive attack would form the base of Blanks’ security. A true assassination, on the other hand, was beyond Blanks’ imagination (and, thus, beyond the scope of his defenses), but perfectly compatible with the goals and methods of Marek Najowski.
Even as Marek Najowski made himself comfortable amid the dirt and rubble of an abandoned tenement, Marty Blanks seated himself in the kitchen of his 49th Street condominium, along with Muhammad Latif and Muhammad’s sister, Lily Brown. Blanks was discussing Stanley Moodrow and his inexplicable escape. Without any knowledge of Katerina Nikolis and the undulating waterbed, the ex-cop’s survival seemed, to Blanks, like one of those miracles the nuns used to talk about. Curiously, Blanks’ obsession with Stanley Moodrow and the danger Moodrow presented, didn’t surprise Latif at all. Latif had grown up in the 7th Precinct on the Lower East Side and knew all about the giant detective with the tombstone face. The last thing Latif felt he needed was Stanley Moodrow sniffing around his door. Even if Moodrow was after Blanks for a crime that didn’t really involve Latif.
“I been gettin�
� stories back,” Lily Brown said. One of her functions, as a trusted lieutenant in the Latif-Blanks organization, was to service many of the dealers at the Jackson Arms. “From some of the Queens crew. Them white boys you picked out, Marty? They fucked it up bad.” She sniffed loudly, her contempt for whites (with the sole exception of Marty Blanks, who’d backed her brother when they jailed together) more than obvious.
“How?” Blanks was still amazed. “The assholes had Uzis and the cop was twenty feet away. How the fuck could they miss? I mean it. How the fuck could they miss?”
“Word, my man,” Lily counseled. “You know the riff about all black men got their brains in their Johnsons? Seem like your white boys made us look like Catholic priests.” Lily Brown shook with laughter. “Up and down, Marty. Up and down and all around. Your shooters were lovers, not fighters. They took a little white bitch with them to help pass the time. When the shootin’ started, she come out the van like the devil was goin’ up her ass. Damn, but your boys was mad. Fact, Marty, they was so mad they chilled the bitch instead of the cop.”
Latif, who loved Blanks like a brother, couldn’t resist the chance to kid his friend. “Jus’ be grateful, bro. Be grateful the assholes got themselves killed. If one of them Irish boys survived, Moodrow’d be here right now.”
Blanks stared at his partner for a moment, then smiled. “I got an interestin’ piece of news for ya, Muhammad. The cops emptied the building today. We knew it was comin’ and got our people out. Only the asshole, the political dude, got busted and he can’t bring nobody back to us. I ain’t expectin’ to send no more people in there, man. Fuckin’ street cops’re all over the block.”
“What about the investment?” Lily asked.
“That shit don’t worry me. Najowski pisses his pants whenever I’m in the room.”
Marek Najowski pulled a torn and broken easy chair up to the window, laid newspaper on the arm, and sat down to wait. In some ways, he thought, still-hunting is as great a test of hunting skill as facing the charge of an angry buffalo. It not only tests patience, it tests the hunter’s understanding of the quarry’s territory. Marek was in the fourth floor bedroom of an abandoned tenement on Ninth Avenue, a position which offered a clear view of the short stoop leading to the 49th Street home of his partner, Marty Blanks. Sandwiched between two decrepit tenements, Blanks’ newly renovated building stood out like a Porsche between Volkswagens. There could be no mistake.
And the streetlight, with its halogen bulb, set conveniently at the foot of the stoop, only added to Marek’s confidence. As did the floodlights installed by a condo board terrified of crime. At one point, before he had reconnoitered the scene, Marek had planned to use a Litton nightscope. The nightscope could amplify available light several thousand times, but the image it delivered was often unclear and there was the danger that he, like the Cohan brothers, would shoot the wrong man. Now, of course, with the building lit up like the endless parade of whores working Eleventh Avenue, identification would be sure and certain.
What wasn’t certain, though, and what Marek hadn’t prepared himself for, was the number of tenants and visitors going in and out of the building. Marek was certain that Blanks was inside the building, but he was taking no chances; he scoped every head that passed through the doorway, snapping the Weatherby against his shoulder and sighting down in less than three seconds.
He would take Blanks out with a chest shot. Blanks was broad chested. (How many times had he watched Blanks inflate like the ape he was?) Marek’s shot could miss by four or five inches and kill Blanks, anyway. It would certainly knock him down and keep him down long enough for Marek to get off a second shot. Not that he’d need a second shot. Not that he needed anything, but the death of Marty Blanks.
Marty Blanks was drinking his third Miller High Life. Miller was, in his opinion at least, the perfect choice for a celebration. Didn’t the brewers call Miller “The Champagne of Bottled Beers”? And he hated all wine, especially the bubbly shit. Champagne had a place; he’d admit that. The only thing was that its place was grandma and grandpa’s 50th wedding anniversary.
“Say again?” Muhammad asked. “What we celebratin’?” Muhammad was pulling on a joint of super grade Thai weed. It had come to him, sticky as tar, from a low echelon dealer looking for a better connection.
“We’re celebratin’ me at last gettin’ ta do what I been wantin’ ta do since the first day I laid eyes on Marek Najowski. First, I’m gonna make him refund my investment, plus interest. Then I’m gonna bust him up.”
Lily Brown, sipping a glass of Chivas, giggled. “You sure do hate that partner of yours, Marty. Truth, man, I would never have a partner I didn’t like. I feel like if I don’t like someone, I can’t trust ’em.”
“I don’t gotta trust the asshole,” Marty grunted. “Marek came to me for muscle. If he could’ve supplied it himself, I never woulda heard his fuckin’ name. Which woulda made me ten times better off.”
Muhammad held out the joint to Marty, who waved it away, then opened another beer. Blanks was beginning to feel good, to shake off his disappointment at falling back into dependence on dealing. “See,” Marty continued, “I’m thinkin’ that Marek was makin’ me a guarantee. I didn’t go to him. He came to me and he said, ‘Do this and do that and you’ll make ten million dollars. You’ll be rich and you can retire forever.’ Didn’t I do exactly what he told me? Shit, I done it better than good, but here I am with my tail between my legs. Who am I gonna blame? Myself? Word, Muhammad, if I thought Marek had the bank, I’d beat the whole ten million out of his ass.”
After midnight, the traffic in and out of Marty Blanks building virtually stopped and Marek Najowski was denied even the small diversion of sighting down on potential targets. He was beginning to feel some fatigue, but his contingency plan, in case Blanks didn’t show by one o’clock, was sitting securely in his jacket pocket. Eight plans, actually—real beauties. Real black beauties. Taken every six hours, they’d keep him awake and alert until Blanks made his last appearance. They’d sharpen him, hone his desire, tighten his finger.
Still, even though his eyes were riveted to Marty Blanks’ front door, Marek’s mind began to drift. He thought about his early life, remembered the period before Flatbush had been overrun by the expanding black ghetto as being idyllic. It had all changed after his mother had been attacked. His father had spent his off-hours in the hospital with his mother, leaving the children to fend for themselves. His two sisters had married early. Irene, the oldest, took a garbage-man to her bed when she was seventeen. She’d been dropping babies ever since. Mary-Jo had done a little better. She’d married a bookkeeper who drank himself to death before he was thirty-five.
“ ‘And the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons,’ ” Marek said aloud. The failures of his family only emphasized his own fitness. He had survived. They had drowned. He was rising. They continued to sink.
One by one, the lights began to go out in the occupied tenements on 49th Street, a small, homely drama that had Marek sighing for his own home. He wouldn’t be seeing Brooklyn Heights for a while. He was heading upstate—just in case Muhammad Latif decided to avenge his partner. There was always the chance, though he couldn’t know who pulled the trigger, that Latif would strike out at everybody. But Muhammad’s memory would only last as long as his next big deal. In the drug world, short term profits are measured in days, not fiscal years.
In fact, by the time Marie showed for her regular visit, on Saturday, the whole business would probably be over. Of course, he wouldn’t be there, but that wouldn’t matter. George Wang would yell at him in high-pitched chinky-English: “Why you make me bankrupt? I no can afford send girl for nothing.” And Marek would pay up, too. He’d pay for the chance to break her down, to erase, once and for all, the disrespect at the bottom of her discipline.
He thought about slavery, about the possibility of owning her. God, those were great days. Slavery had once been universal, the common fate of the common man. He
felt himself beginning to sink into the fantasy and held himself back. After all, business did come first.
But he’d love to buy her once and for all, to buy and own her instead of merely renting. If he owned her, he’d break her down in a minute. She could maintain her illusion of control only so long as she was paid. But if there was force, if she performed for him because he forced her to perform, all dignity would be lost. Perhaps he could find a way to use force without angering George Wang. Maybe…
When the thought came to him, he pulled away from the window and shook with pleasure. Wang was even greedier than the whore: whereas sweet Marie would do anything for money, George Wang would sell anything for money. What Marek would do, as soon as he settled down upstate, was arrange to buy a full day of Marie’s time, with the single proviso that Marie shouldn’t be told. Let her come to him expecting an ordinary session, then be forced to stay. Let her perform without knowing when (or if) she was going to be released. He’d make it up to her later. Hell, he knew she’d do anything for money. And, if she wouldn’t…How much, he wondered, would the Chinaman charge if she never came back?
Marty Blanks was pretty drunk when the call came through. He didn’t usually allow himself to get drunk, but he’d been under a lot of strain and he wasn’t expecting to go out. Still Marty Blanks had put a protective routine into place when he first moved into the building and he wasn’t about to deviate just because he’d downed a few too many cervezas. He called his bodyguards into the kitchen where Lily and Muhammad were already present.
“We gotta go up to the Bronx,” he announced. “Little Benny’s holding and I wanna get to him before he offs the load. Hustle it up, but keep your eyes open. It’s late and we’d make easy targets.”
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