A Piece of the Action sm-5

by Stephen Solomita

  “Let’s move up to Sixth Street. In case somebody’s momma decides to call the cops.”

  They walked over to Avenue D, then turned north. “What were ya doin’, Santo?” Jake asked. “Were you just gonna let ’em rob ya?”

  “They weren’t thieves,” Silesi replied evenly. “The Dragons aren’t a fighting gang.”

  “Then what the fuck did they want?”

  “They wanted me to stop bringing heroin into the neighborhood. They said it was destroying the community.”

  “No shit?” Jake shook his head in wonder. “Puerto Rican social workers. Who woulda believed it.”

  “What could I say, Jake? It surprised me, too.”

  “Did they happen to mention what they were gonna do? In case you decided not to take their advice.”

  “You showed up before they got to that part.”

  “Well, you could forget about them. They ain’t comin’ back. There’s somethin’ else I wanna talk about anyway. Ya told me your uncle had a police lieutenant in his pocket. Remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “So what I wanna know is how come we gotta worry about the cops? Because Joe Faci told me it was fixed. I mean was he bullshitting me or what? It seems to me if ya really got a lieutenant in ya pocket, you could find out where the cops hid the pimp and his old lady.”

  “That’s not my end of it, Jake. All I know is some cop’s making a fuss and Steppy’s dealing with it.”

  They were interrupted by what Jake, thinking about it later, called a miracle. A woman, dressed in a dark cloth coat and a woolen scarf, stepped out of a doorway and approached them. Her hands were shaking, her nose running freely.

  “Sandy,” she said, “ya gotta help me out.”

  Jake recognized Betty O’Neill immediately. Which is not to say that she recognized him. She wasn’t even looking at him. The bitch only had eyes for her pusher.

  “I’m sick,” she said. “I gotta have a fix. I gotta.”

  “I just dropped off forty bags the other day,” Silesi said calmly. “You must have some kind of habit, Betty. Maybe it’s time for you to kick.”

  “It ain’t that,” Betty said. “Al dumped it in the toilet. He said that dope is what got us into the mess we’re in. I asked him, ‘What mess?’ but all he can say is we gotta run. I don’t know what’s the matter with him, Sandy. He’s turned into some kind of a pansy.”

  “Was he talkin’ to the cops, Betty?” Jake asked. Now she was looking at him, trying to place him. He smiled innocently. “I mean I’m only askin’ because there’s rumors goin’ around and what with you and Al takin’ off, people are startin’ to get worried.”

  “A cop did come to the house, but Al didn’t tell him nothin’. I swear it.”

  “Then why did he run away?”

  “Because he’s a damned coward, that’s why.” She paused long enough to run the sleeve of her coat across her mouth and nose. “Al figured that when Santo seen him and the cop together, he’d jump to conclusions.”

  “Betty,” Jake said, “do you know who I am?”

  “You’re Santo’s boss.”

  “That’s right.” He took a small paper bag out of his overcoat pocket and let her take a look at what was inside. “You know what that is, don’t ya?”

  “Dope.” Her hand floated up for a moment, then dropped to her side. “I got money. I’ll take it all.”

  Jake shook his head. He counted out ten caps, then handed the rest to Silesi. “Go take care of business, Santo. You got customers need servicin’.” He waited until he and Betty were alone before speaking again. “What would ya give for this, Betty?” he asked. “What would ya give?”

  Betty managed a crooked smile. “I’d give ya whatever ya wanted.” She put her hand beneath her coat and let it slide down her belly.

  “What I want is your husband. And I ain’t no fag, either. I just gotta make sure he’s all right, that he ain’t talkin’ to the wrong people.”

  “That chicken ain’t talkin’ to nobody. He don’t hardly answer the door.”

  “I got an idea, Betty. Why don’t you and me go some place private? That way you could take care of what you gotta take care of. When you’re all better we could talk about this … this problem.”

  “Where are we goin’?”

  “To paradise. The Paradise Hotel. A friend of mine has a room there.”

  The news, as far as Jake was concerned, was all good. Al O’Neill wasn’t being protected by the cops. He had to be holed up somewhere on his own, because if the cops were involved, Betty wouldn’t be roaming the streets looking for dope. She’d be climbing the walls in some locked room.

  Jake led the way down Avenue D and across Houston Street. He didn’t bother watching Betty O’Neill. (He could hear her sniveling as she trotted alongside him like a stray dog sniffing at a roast beef sandwich.) Instead, he thought about what was wrong here. If Al O’Neill was talking, the first thing the cops would’ve done is drag his sorry ass into the precinct to look at the mug books. Jake was in those books. Izzy and Abe, too. So, how come …

  Maybe O’Neill hadn’t talked to anyone. Maybe it was all Santo Silesi’s imagination. Maybe Silesi was only trying to make himself more important to Joe Faci and Steppy Accacio. Maybe Accacio himself was nothing more than a chickenshit sissy who panicked every time he heard a noise in the house. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

  But none of that mattered and Jake knew it. Because what he should’ve done was take care of Al and Betty when Abe plugged the spic. What he should have done was eliminate the witnesses on the spot. He’d made a mistake, just like Abe Weinberg had made a mistake, and now he had to pay for it. Or Betty O’Neill had to pay for it. That was closer to the truth. Betty and her old man had to pay the price. Permanently.

  Jake wasn’t surprised to find the lobby of the Paradise Hotel deserted. The assorted whores and hustlers who lived in the Paradise weren’t exactly early risers. Plus it was Sunday, and the desk clerk wouldn’t come on duty until noon. Jake led Betty up the stairs to Izzy’s room on the second floor.

  “Good morning, Izzy,” Jake said when the door opened. “I brought a guest.”

  Betty O’Neill may not have recognized Jake Leibowitz, but she knew Izzy Stein well enough. “Oh, Lord,” she muttered. “Lord, Lord, Lord.”

  “Don’t be shy, Betty,” Jake said, pushing her into the room. “Izzy won’t hurt ya. As long as ya tell the truth.”

  “Where’d ya find her?” Izzy asked. “She fall down outta the sky?”

  “Next thing to it. She come lookin’ for dope.” Jake took out three bags of heroin. “Here ya go, Betty. Have a party.”

  “It ain’t enough,” she said. “I gotta have more than that.”

  “Do this much first,” Jake said. “I don’t need ya so stoned ya can’t get off the floor.”

  Betty took the heroin, then stripped off her coat and rolled up the sleeves of her blouse. She fumbled in her purse for a moment, then found a cracked leather billfold and dumped its contents on the table: a crusted eyedropper, the tip of a reusable needle, a bent, blackened tablespoon, a wad of cotton, a narrow strip of paper torn from a dollar bill. Despite her trembling hands, she fitted her works together in record time, wrapping the strip of paper around the open end of the eyedropper, then forcing the needle over it.

  “I need water,” she said.

  Izzy retrieved a glass of water from the table next to his bed. It’d been sitting there for two days.

  “Thanks.” Betty tested the works by filling and emptying the eyedropper and needle several times. When she was satisfied, she squirted water into the tablespoon, added the heroin, then lit a match and heated the mixture until it came to a boil. Finally, she dumped a small piece of cotton into the spoon and set it down to cool.

  “Better not leave that too long,” Jake said. “The roaches’ll drink it.”

  “Ha, ha.” Betty fumbled with her sleeve again, trying to roll it up past her bicep. “Goddamn winter. It gets in your
way.” She pulled her blouse off, stripping down to a lace brassiere, then wrapped a cloth belt around her upper arm and pulled it tight with her teeth. The veins at her elbow and along her bicep were black with scar tissue, but she patiently worked her finger along the dark lines until she was satisfied, then picked up the dropper and jammed the needle into her flesh. Almost miraculously, a crimson drop blossomed in the clear liquid. With a sigh, she let the belt drop out of her mouth and squeezed the bulb.

  Her hands stopped trembling and her nose stopped running within seconds. Her whole body straightened as the knotted muscles in her back began to smooth out.

  “That better?” Jake asked.

  “Listen,” Betty said, ignoring the question, “ya gotta understand that I didn’t say nothin’ to that cop. I don’t know what’s happening to Al. Maybe he’s gettin’ soft in his old age. But I didn’t have nothin’ to do with nothin’ as far as the cop is concerned.”

  “I believe ya,” Jake said. “That’s how come I know ya wouldn’t mind helpin’ us out here. I mean you was there and I wasn’t.” He waited for Betty to nod before continuing. “What’d the cop want?”

  “He was askin’ about the john who got killed right after Christmas.”

  “And what’d ya tell him?”

  “I didn’t tell him nothin’.”

  “What’d Al tell him?”

  “See, that’s the thing. The cop locked me in the toilet so’s I couldn’t hear what was goin’ on.”

  “You were in there all the time?”

  “No, he took me out later and locked Al up. Then he asked me a whole lotta questions about that night the john got shot. But I didn’t say nothin’ except I wasn’t there. I told him I got run over by a car and I was sleepin’ upstairs at the time.”

  “If you were in the toilet, how do ya know Santo was there when Al was talkin’ to the cop? Santo didn’t say nothin’ about seein’ you.”

  “Al told me.”

  “What else did he tell ya? What’d he tell the cops?”

  “That’s what I’m tryin’ to say. I don’t know. All Al said is Santo seen us so we gotta run. I told him we can explain it. I mean what’re we supposed to do? Ya can’t stop the cops from comin’ around, can ya?”

  “Maybe Al has a guilty conscience.”

  Betty didn’t answer and Jake let it go. He looked over at Izzy and smiled. “Gimme ten caps, Iz. I got a feelin’ Betty’s gonna need it.”

  Izzy crossed to the far corner and yanked up one of the floorboards. He pulled out a mason jar filled with small bags and counted out ten of them.

  “See, Betty?” Jake said. “I could keep ya high forever. I mean if you was my woman, that’s what I’d do.”

  Betty attempted a coquettish smile. She squared her narrow shoulders and pushed her chest out. “I don’t know what’s happened with Al. He ain’t the man I married, that’s for sure. I mean he ain’t come near me in years. If I want some, I gotta go to one of the girls. Ain’t that unbelievable?”

  Jake took the heroin from Izzy and tossed five bags on the table next to Betty’s eyedropper. Betty started to go for it, but Jake caught her arm. “It ain’t time yet. First I gotta get some answers.” He flipped her onto the bed. “I’m not gonna blame you for what ya husband said to the cops. But I don’t want no more bullshit. Ya either come clean or what I’m gonna do’ll make what Izzy done to ya seem like a honeymoon hump.”

  Betty’s head swiveled back and forth, from the heroin to Jake’s face. “You ain’t gonna kill me, are ya? For what Al said?”

  “As a matter of fact, I got a proposition for ya. In Providence, Rhode Island. See, ya can’t stay around here ’cause the cops’ll find ya. But I got a small establishment in Providence that’s runnin’ all fucked up. The woman there can’t keep the whores in line. I figured maybe you could take it over. Get it back to makin’ a decent profit. All I need to know is what Al told the cops and where he’s hidin’ out.”

  Betty leaned back, letting her head fall against the pillows. “Ya know I used to be pretty good. When I was in the trade.”

  “Cut the crap. I been patient long enough.”

  She sat back up and straightened the straps of her bra. “He told the cop that Santo and the guys that beat us up both work for Steppy Accacio. The cop made Al write it out and sign a paper. Then he let us go.”

  “He didn’t take ya down to look at no mug shots?” Jake felt himself getting excited. Maybe this wasn’t as bad as he’d thought. An idea began to form in his mind. The cop had eyeballed Santo Silesi, but he didn’t know who Jake was or what he looked like. If the cop went after Santo and Accacio, if he took them out of the picture, there’d be a big hole in the Lower East Side heroin business. A hole for Jake to fill if could find himself another dope connection. What Jake didn’t know is why the cop had released Al and Betty. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but if Al was holed up by himself, it also didn’t matter.

  Betty shook her head. “I got the feeling he was in a hurry. Maybe that’s why he didn’t work me over.”

  “Where’s ya husband now?”

  “He went out to Jersey. To visit his mother. That’s how come I got out. I ain’t good enough for his mother.”

  “I mean where’s he stayin’? In the city.”

  “We got a room in Hell’s Kitchen. That’s where Al grew up. We had the room for years. Use it once in a while to get away from the business.”

  “Could we go there now? Could we go over and wait for Al?”

  “Just lemme do up them caps first. Then, whatever ya want. I mean Al gotta pay the price, right? If he didn’t wanna pay, he shouldn’t’ve done what he done.”

  “That’s the right way to look at it, Betty. The dope is yours. Take ya time. Enjoy.”

  Jake nodded to Izzy and both men crossed the room. They waited patiently until Betty pressed the bulb of the eyedropper, until she rocked back in the chair, her eyes fluttering. “Bring the saps and a knife, Izzy,” Jake whispered. “We wanna do this quiet.”

  Seventeen

  Stanley Moodrow, unwashed and unshaven, was spooning Maxwell House coffee into his percolator when he suddenly realized that he was having the time of his life. Sure, he was in a battle (a war, really) and there was always the possibility of losing, but it wasn’t the kind of useless combat that fed the dreams of bloodthirsty spectators. He wasn’t likely to come out of it with a cracked nose or a split eyebrow, either. No, what he was doing, he told himself, was hunting for truly dangerous game. Like that Englishman who went from one Indian village to another, shooting man-eating tigers from the back of an elephant.

  He dumped the percolator on a burner and went into the bathroom to shave. The water was barely warm, which wasn’t so great because Kate Cohan had telephoned the night before and told him that she’d decided to give the Lower East Side a chance.

  “Show me around,” she’d said. “And I promise to keep an open mind.” Moodrow wondered if her open mind extended to an occasional lack of hot water. Not having a ready answer, he worked up a lather and quickly brushed it across his face. He grabbed his razor, examined it closely, then decided to change the blade. Usually, he managed to squeeze three or four shaves out of a Gilette, but the last couple were only bearable when he had plenty of hot water. When the water was this cold, he either changed the blade or his face ended up the color of a ripe strawberry.

  He stared at himself in the mirror for a moment before he began to scrape at his beard. Mornings were special times for him. Ever since his mother died and he’d awakened to find himself alone, he’d used the early hours to analyze his problems. At first, he’d concerned himself with other fighters, then-strengths and weaknesses. Then he’d turned his attention to the job and his personal ambitions. Now, he found himself preoccupied with the details of the hunt. Much to his surprise, they threatened to overwhelm all other considerations, even his impending marriage.

  After leaving the house on Pitt Street, he’d done what any good detective had to do. He’
d canvassed the immediate neighborhood, knocking on doors, hoping that someone had seen or heard something on the night Luis Melenguez had been murdered. What he wanted was a witness, but he wasn’t surprised to come up empty. Not only had the murder taken place more than two weeks before, the Lower East Side wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where good citizens eagerly came forth to share information with the police. As far as most residents of the Lower East Side were concerned, the cops were as dangerous as the criminals.

  The whole thing would have been a lot easier if he could have dragged the O’Neills into the 7th and had them look at mug shots until they put names and faces on the men who’d come visiting the day after Christmas. That wasn’t going to happen, of course, but he, Moodrow, had gotten a good look at the drug dealer called Santo, and Santo, according to Al and Betty O’Neill, worked for Steppy Accacio, the man who’d sent the shooters. Which meant that Stanley Moodrow could look at mug shots, too. Or he could if the 7th wasn’t off-limits.

  Moodrow wondered what would happen if he just walked in there, pulled the mug books and started turning the pages. He couldn’t imagine Patero trying to stop him from doing what his badge entitled him to do. No, Patero would simply get on the phone and make Santo vanish. Much better to let Patero and Pat Cohan think they were in control of the situation.

  What he needed was a photograph to show around. Maybe he didn’t have a stable of informants like most of the veterans, but he’d grown up on the Lower East Side. He knew a lot of people, people on both sides of the law and people who straddled the fence. If he had something to show, he’d find Santo easily enough.

  The doorbell rang. He answered the door, finding Allen Epstein, as expected, and Paul Maguire.

  “Hey, Paul, whatta ya say? C’mon in. You, too, Sarge.” Moodrow led the two cops into the kitchen and poured out the ritual mugs of coffee.

  “I hope you don’t mind that I brought Paul with me,” Epstein said. “Paul’s an old friend of mine. You could trust him a hundred percent.”

  “That mean you wanna go on the record, Paul?” Moodrow asked. He couldn’t shake the simple fact that Maguire had walked away from a homicide. Sure, Patero had ordered him to walk away, but if that was a good excuse, what would Maguire do if Patero ordered him to get Stanley Moodrow?