A Piece of the Action sm-5

by Stephen Solomita

  “What O’Malley’s gonna do is take it on the lam as soon as he figures a way to get out of there. He’d be gone already if the fire escape outside his window wasn’t hanging by a thread. Which means that we have to move fast. We’ve gotta get the DA’s office to pull O’Malley off the street before he takes a hike. Or before someone kills him. Maybe Maguire’ll help. I didn’t wanna ask him to come out in the open, but if O’Malley disappears, the case against Leibowitz is thinner than Olive Oyl’s butt.”

  Epstein held up a hand. “What you said about me being a hero for not busting you? It turned out to be a hundred percent accurate. I told McElroy that I went to your apartment to ask you to surrender. I was afraid of what you might do if someone else showed up. Then you gave me Patero’s confession and the rest of the evidence. You said that you’d go to the papers if I tried to arrest you. What could I do? I’m only a sergeant. How could I make a decision like that? By the time I finished describing Patero’s confession, the captain was ready to give me a medal. McElroy guarantees that you will not be arrested before Leibowitz goes down. He begged me to help keep the lid on. You don’t need Maguire, Stanley. You can go to the DA’s people for whatever you want.”

  Moodrow got up and walked over to the kitchen window. He pulled aside the curtain and looked down at the street below. It was six o’clock in the morning and he was anxious to get to work.

  “Why did McElroy cave in so fast?”

  “A couple of reasons. He kicked me out of his office at one point. Asked me to wait in the bullpen for a few minutes while he made some calls. I figure he phoned his rabbi, who has to be at least a deputy chief, and his rabbi ordered him to hold off. McElroy’s only forty-five. He’s a cinch to make inspector and he could go much higher. But not if he has a major scandal in his precinct. Think about it, Stanley. It’s the precinct commander’s job to keep things running smoothly. Business as usual is what it’s all about. If the papers get their hands on Patero’s confession, McElroy’s career is over.”

  Moodrow watched the raindrops bounce off the sidewalk. The temperature was down in the thirties and the few pedestrians were hunched beneath umbrellas as they hustled toward the subway. Some were actually running.

  “There’s a kid named Moretti in the DA’s office. He’s eager, real eager. I think I’m gonna use him for the warrants, Sarge. Make sure it’s done right. The judges don’t read the warrants before they sign them. It could be that Cohan has enough pull to get an ADA to blow the paperwork.”

  “That’s stretching it, Stanley.”

  “I just wanna be sure.” Moodrow dropped the curtain and walked back to the table. “Moretti comes in early to work on pending cases. I’ve gotta get to him before he goes to court. You wanna come along and keep an eye on me? Maybe they’ll make you commissioner.”

  Santo Silesi was getting very tired of trailing Mama Leibowitz through the Essex Street Market. How could anyone, even a Jew, spend an hour choosing pickled tomatoes from a barrel? Why didn’t the pickle man shove one of those tomatoes up her gargantuan butt? What the hell could they be talking about?

  When Mama Leibowitz shifted her attention to a tub of double-sours, Santo emitted a groan of genuine pain. If there was any other way to get into Jake Leibowitz’s apartment, any other way to trap his uncle’s killer, he’d take it in a hot flash. Except, of course, simply kicking the door down, the only other way he could think of. Santo’s hatred of Jake Leibowitz hadn’t quite driven him over the edge. Not yet. Not while Mama Leibowitz was available to lead him through that door.

  “You are having the pain, senor?”

  Santo glanced down at the shoe salesman kneeling at his feet. You had to feel sorry for the little greaseball. Six pair of shoes and no hope of a sale. Not at Paolo’s Zapateria with its two-dollar cardboard specials. The shoes were so goddamned pointy they looked more like deadly weapons than something you’d wear on your feet.

  Puerto Rican Fence Climbers. That’s what everybody called them. The perfect size for a chain-link fence in your neighbor’s back yard.

  “Don’t you have any brown shoes?” Santo asked. He looked at his own Florsheim wing tips sitting next to one of Paolo’s specials, two thoroughbreds next to a plow horse, and shook his head. Spics and sheenys-what had the world come to?

  “This is disgusting,” he said.

  “You no like the shoes, senor?”

  “Too greasy,” Santo muttered, slipping his feet into his own shoes. The bitch was moving at last, sliding her blubber along the concrete floor. As she passed each stall, she shouted a greeting to the proprietor.

  “Yoo-hoo, Solly, how’s by you today? How’s business?”

  How’s your son? Your daughter? Your wife? Your grandchildren? How’s your heart? Your liver? Your second cousin’s hairy butt? How’s … Disgusting. But maybe not as disgusting as all the bullshit he’d taken from Jake Leibowitz. He could remember every episode. Word for word. The way Santo Silesi saw it, there were only two options and both of them spelled death. Death for Jake Leibowitz. Or death for Santo Silesi.

  When Mama Leibowitz stopped at Moishe’s Kosher Poultry, Santo ducked into the first available stall: B amp;B Foundation Garments.

  “You want maybe a girdle?”

  Santo stared down at the old lady who’d asked the question. She couldn’t have been more than four feet tall and she was skinny as a rail. Meanwhile, there was no fear in her voice. None whatsoever.

  “Sorry,” Santo said, “wrong sewer.” He crossed the aisle between stalls and began to sort through a tray of men’s wallets. Mama Leibowitz showed no sign of moving on. She was busy examining a live chicken in a little wooden cage. Santo wondered what she was looking for. The cage was so small, the animal could barely move. As he watched, the proprietor, a tall skinny man with an adam’s apple that bobbed up and down like a yo-yo, put the cage back and brought out another.

  “This is a chicken?” Santo heard Mama Leibowitz cry out in disbelief. She sounded the way she would after he, Santo Silesi, blew the top of her son’s head off. “This chicken is so old it’s a duck.”

  “Why should an old chicken be a duck?”

  “Please, I didn’t come off the boat this minute. I want a chicken that’s a chicken for roasting, not a hen for stewing.”

  “Maybe you’d like to come around the counter and pick one for yourself? Before I get a hernia from carrying the cages?”

  “That would be fine.”

  Santo watched the proprietor swing a section of the counter up. Even turned sideways, Mama Leibowitz could barely squeeze her fat gut through the opening. Then she was in the back, surrounded by squawking birds and the acrid stench of manure. The chickens, perhaps sensing her intentions, began to flutter in the cages, sending up a thick cloud of feathers that veiled her bulk.

  Maybe she’ll disappear, Santo thought. Maybe she’ll pull a Houdini and vanish.

  The chickens were squawking in near panic, but nobody in the market appeared to notice. It was everyday stuff to the shoppers and the shopkeepers. The chaos. The gossip. The dirty concrete floor and the ill-kept stalls piled with shoddy merchandise. All perfectly natural in this universe of sheenys and spics.

  Well, the hell with it. The fat bitch didn’t know him from Adam. Santo walked right past her to the hot dog wagon near the Delancey Street entrance to the market and ordered two franks and a beer. Naturally, he didn’t get to finish the first frank, before she up and walked right past him. Without the chicken.

  What I’m gonna do, Santo thought, as he imitated her slow-motion walk through the neighborhood, is make sure Jake looks me right in the eye before I kill him. He’s gotta know who’s pulling the trigger. Maybe I’ll gut-shoot him first. So I could watch him flop around until he begs me to finish him off.

  Mama Leibowitz seemed to know everybody on the Lower East Side, calling out greetings to passersby as she waddled the four blocks to her apartment. It’d finally stopped raining and the housewives were out in force, so she had plenty
of company. The five-minute stroll took almost an hour. She’d shuffle forward a few yards, her body swaying like a metronome as she tried to pick her feet off the sidewalk, then it would begin: “Sadie, how’s by you? Your husband’s arthritis, it’s better, maybe?” Santo thought he was going to go off his rocker.

  Still, it wasn’t all bad. Despite the stops and starts, Mama Leibowitz never turned around, not once, not even when Santo followed her through the entrance to her building, when he practically clipped her heels as she hauled herself up three flights of stairs. Not even when he yanked out his.44 and came up directly behind her as she turned the key in the lock.

  Santo slammed the revolver into Mama Leibowitz’s head with all the force at his command. He was trying to kill her. Actually trying. Not that there was time to check her out. He pushed her body through the door, then stepped across her blubbery butt as he swept the open space in front of him. He was standing in the living room. The kitchen was on his right. He could see most, but not all of it. On his left, a hallway led to the bedrooms.

  He stepped out into the center of the living room, extending the revolver, holding it with both hands. The bitch fell without a sound, he reminded himself. There’s no rush. Jake can’t know you’re here. Do it slow and do it right. Because the very worst thing that could happen is to die knowing you let the Jew off the hook.

  The kitchen was empty. Santo crossed the living room, keeping his body close to the wall. The bathroom door at the far end of the apartment was open. It, too, was empty. Unless Jake was hiding in the tub. But Santo couldn’t worry about that. You couldn’t look in the closets until you covered the obvious places. Which meant the bedrooms, two closed doors on the left side of the hallway.

  If I’m not afraid to die, Santo asked himself, then why am I sweating? Why’s my hand shaking? This isn’t the way it happens in the movies. It isn’t the way it happened with Izzy Stein, either. Izzy went out like a man. He was tough and he made it easy. What if Jake was behind one of those doors? What if he was kneeling behind the bed with a.45 aimed at the very space Santo Silesi was sure to occupy?

  A moment followed in which there were no thoughts. A dead space, a lost chunk of time when the world simply didn’t exist. Wasn’t there a thing in the Bible about time standing still? Or the sun standing still? There were objects in front of Santo’s eyes, but he couldn’t see them, couldn’t focus. They were there and they weren’t there. Like ghosts in a movie.

  I’m not cut out for this, Santo thought. I’m not a pro. And if I don’t get my act together, I never will be.

  What he wanted to do was run from room to room, throwing open doors and closets, to scream Jake’s name, calling him out to a fair fight. There’s only room for one of us in this town, pardner. Come tomorrow at noon, that one is gonna be me.

  In the end, when the world was solid again, when chairs and tables were chairs and tables, when the sofa didn’t shimmer like a desert mirage, Santo took it very slowly. He tiptoed over to the first door and put his ear against the wood, reminding himself that Jake couldn’t know there was anyone else in the apartment. The fact that all he, Santo, could hear was dead silence, didn’t mean that Jake was inside with a.45 trained on the door.

  Santo turned the knob carefully, almost rejoicing in its smooth motion, then pushed it open, careful to keep most of his body behind the frame. Still, his heart beat wildly as his eyes surveyed the empty room.

  What I should’ve done, he thought, is wait somewhere for Jake to come to me. Because I can’t control this shit.

  He scanned the room quickly. It was a woman’s room, Mama Leibowitz’s most likely. There was no one under the neatly made bed, he could see that much, but the closet door was closed. Jake could be in that closet, squatting down, a shotgun cradled in his arms. He could be just about to kick it open, to come out blasting …

  Santo closed the bedroom door. He had to close it. To get to that other room before he drowned in fear. Quickly and quietly, he moved to the next door, laying his ear against it as he had with the first. The cool wood felt somehow comforting and his first thought was to leave his face there, to rest it against the door as he would against a woman’s breast. There was no sound on the other side.

  Finally, as though he were under water and pushing against a tidal wave, Santo managed to turn the knob and shove the door open. The room was deserted.

  He stepped inside, already beginning to feel like a cowardly fool. The closet door was mercifully open. A few suits and jackets hung inside, far too few to conceal Jake Leibowitz or anybody else. The truth, despite Santo’s racing pulse, was that Jake Leibowitz had flown the coop. He’d taken it on the lam, which, under the circumstances, was the only thing he could have done.

  You’re a punk, Santo told himself, a miserable punk. And this don’t mean you’re off the hook, either. You still have to find the Jew and take care of him. Because if you don’t revenge Steppy, you’ll never be able to hold up your head in this town again. You might as well go out and buy yourself a lunchpail. You might as well get a job.

  Santo shoved the.44 down into the waistband of his trousers. A few minutes ago, he’d been hoping that Mama Leibowitz was dead. Now, he saw her as his ticket to Jake. Of course, he couldn’t be sure that she knew where Jake was hiding, but if she did, he, Santo Silesi, would find out.

  “You’re maybe looking for somebody?”

  Santo spun on his heel to find a bloody Mama Leibowitz standing right behind him. She was holding the biggest handgun Santo had ever seen, holding it right up to his face. It was a vision beyond even his worst nightmare. The blood streamed down over her bloated face. It dripped onto her ratty fur coat, matting the long hairs.

  “Where’s your sword, you Cossack bastard? Where’s your horse?”

  “Wha, wha, wha …”

  “Ha, so you’re plotzing, already.” She grinned, showing a full set of small bloody teeth. “You brought, maybe, a change of underwear?”

  “I, I, I … I don’t get it? I don’t …”

  “Don’t worry about nothing, sonny. This you’re gonna get.”

  The force of the slug blew Santo Silesi halfway across the room. It picked him up and tossed him backwards as carelessly as a superstitious housewife tossing spilled salt over her shoulder. Mama Leibowitz walked after him, holding the revolver in front of her, looking for any sign of life. She needn’t have bothered. The hole in Santo’s forehead was small and neat, but the back of his head was missing altogether.

  “Oy,” Mama Leibowitz groaned, “what a mess.” She stepped over a small lump of wet gray brain and squatted next to Santo. Using just the tips of two fingers, she tugged at his.44 until it came free, then dropped it on the carpet next to his right hand. Finally satisfied, she walked back into the kitchen and called the police.

  Twenty-eight

  “Patience, Stanley,” Allen Epstein said, “like I taught you in the ring.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Sarge, the prick’s spent half the morning bottled up in his room. Why can’t he see us for ten minutes?”

  “Because the ‘prick’ happens to be a judge. Which means he doesn’t have to answer to a couple of flatfoots like us. His ‘room’, by the way, is called his chambers. Which oughta give you an even better idea of where we stand in relation to him. Besides, there were five hundred homicides in New York last year. What’s another killing to a big-time judge?”

  “Three, Sarge,” Moodrow said. “Three killings to a big-time judge. Jake’s been a busy boy.”

  “Four, if you wanna get technical. Don’t forget Steppy Accacio.”

  Moodrow snorted. “That was in New Jersey. It doesn’t count.” They’d found out about Accacio’s murder accidentally. Epstein, with Moodrow’s permission, had called McElroy, filling the captain in on what they were doing and what they planned to do. McElroy had offered backup, been refused, then casually mentioned that Steppy Accacio had been gunned down in his New Jersey home. No, he had none of the details. It wasn’t the 7th Preci
nct’s business. “Besides,” Moodrow continued, “we don’t know if Jake pulled that one off. What I’m trying to be here is accurate. I’m trying to be fair to the Honorable Judge Marone, because the last thing I wanna do is show contempt for the court. I’m sure he got himself elected fair and square. Even if he was nominated by Tammany Hall and ran without opposition.”

  They’d been sitting in a hallway of the Criminal Court Building on Centre Street for almost three hours. Tom Moretti, the ADA, had left the unsigned warrants with Judge Marone’s clerk before nine o’clock, then gone off to a trial in another part of the building. The judge’s signature, Moretti had insisted, was a mere formality. Now it was twelve o’clock and nearly time for the Honorable Judge Marone to go to lunch.

  The plain truth was that Stanley Moodrow was afraid somebody, Santo Silesi or Joe Faci or Dominick Favara or Pat Cohan or Sal Patero or somebody, would get to Jake Leibowitz before he did. In fact, the idea terrified him. Not that he couldn’t see the justice in it. The very real possibility that Jake’s body would come floating up in the East River had to be seen as justice of a sort. Death was the ultimate penalty. A bullet or the electric chair-what difference did it make?

  The difference was that it wouldn’t be him. It wouldn’t be Stanley Moodrow uttering the magic words: You’re under arrest for the murder of Luis Melenguez. That pronouncement belonged to him and he intended to speak it, even if he had to do it over Jake’s dead body. What was the point of hunting, of tracking your quarry down and bringing it to bay, if you had to turn over the rifle at the last minute?

  And there was another point, too. McElroy and the rest of the brass might be cooperating, but it wasn’t because they’d suddenly gotten religion. Right now, they were afraid of Stanley Moodrow. Later on, when Jake Leibowitz, Pat Cohan and Sal Patero were as meaningless as yesterday’s news, there was every reason to believe the big shots would come for their revenge.