“Jake, nu, you should consider giving up.”
“Good advice, ma. I’ll be sure to take it.”
Jake could see his mother arriving at Sing-Sing to witness the execution. Wearing a shapeless black dress beneath her fur coat. Stopping to pose for the cameras.
“My poor Jakeleh. He was such a good boy. Like an angel. With curls you wouldn’t believe. I still have my Jakeleh’s curls. I keep them in a locket.”
“Awright, ma, I gotta go and get ready. I don’t wanna die in my underwear.”
Jake hung up and walked into the bedroom. He rummaged through his Aunt Golda’s closet, pushing her dresses out of the way. What he wanted was his absolute best. Silk tie, silk shirt. His beautiful gray suit; his shiniest black shoes.
“Should I wear a hat?” he asked himself. A hat didn’t make any sense, because he wasn’t going anywhere. Only he didn’t really feel dressed without a hat. Of course, maybe he shouldn’t wear the suit, either. If the flatfoots shot up his good suit, he was gonna have to be buried in an off-the-rack from Macy’s.
But, no, the suit didn’t matter, either. There was no way he was gonna be buried like a goy. Jews didn’t have wakes with the relatives coming to the coffin for a last look. Mama Leibowitz would jam his carcass into a pine box and dump him as soon as possible. Assuming the rabbi gave permission for a Jewish burial.
“What it is,” he said, shrugging into his silk shirt, “is if I wear a hat, they’ll say I was gettin’ ready to run. They’ll say I was a punk.”
Finished dressing, Jake went back into the living room and made himself a barricade by turning a heavy oak table on its edge, then jamming it tight against the sofa. He wasn’t worried about surprise. There was only one way into the apartment (or out of it, for that matter) and it was protected by a steel-covered fire door. What the cops would do is try to flush him out with tear gas. And they’d do it from the roof of the next building, because they couldn’t reach him from the ground. And they’d have to stand up to make the toss. They’d have to become targets.
“I wonder how many cops I could take out?” Jake mused as he drew the shades. “Five? Ten?”
Why not? Wasn’t he the mug who knocked off Steppy Accacio and Joe Faci?
Nobody would’ve believed that, either. Nobody would’ve believed a lotta things about Jake Leibowitz. Until they crossed him.
“If I was a wop,” he said, “they woulda known about me a long time ago.”
Moodrow stayed with Greta Bloom until they reached the front door of Sarah Leibowitz’s apartment building. What he wanted to do was break into a dead run. To flag down the first cab he saw, rip the driver out and mash the pedal through the floorboards. The worst part was that he knew he could get away with it. Greta hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even turned to look at him.
“Tell me something, Greta,” he finally said, holding himself in place with the sheer force of his will. “How do you think the horses felt?”
“What horses? What are you talking about?”
“The horses, Greta. The ones you say my mother jammed in the ass with a hatpin. How do you think the horses felt?”
She stared at him for a moment, her eyes narrowing, then dropped her gaze. “It was necessary,” she admitted. “But I felt sorry for the horses. The cops were animals because they wanted to be animals. But the horses …”
“Now, I’m gonna tell you something so you’ll understand. Right now, while we’re out here talking, Sarah Leibowitz is calling her son.”
“So maybe you should have acted like a mensch instead of a Nazi.”
“I wasn’t gonna sweet-talk her out of Jake’s address and you know it. She was wearing a goddamned fur coat. In the house. What do ya wanna bet it came from her son? And that she knew where he got the money to buy it? Look, Greta, I have to go. Just think about the horses, all right?”
Moodrow stepped out into the street and waved down a passing cruiser. He had no room, now, for Greta. Or for anybody else except Jake Leibowitz.
“Hey, Stanley, whatta ya say?”
The cop driving the car was named Fred Stone. A boxing enthusiast, he and Moodrow had sparred in the department gym on several occasions.
“What’s doin’, Freddy. You still droppin’ the left?” Moodrow crouched slightly, making eye contact with the cop riding shotgun. “Butch, how’s it goin’?” Butch Buccarelli was neither friend nor foe. A ten-year veteran, he’d already passed the sergeant’s exam and was just killing time while he waited for his appointment.
“Tell me somethin’, Moodrow,” Buccarelli said evenly, “you a bad guy or a good guy these days? I can’t keep track. You change costumes faster than Superman.”
Moodrow smiled agreeably. “I haven’t checked in with the captain this morning, but I think I’m a good guy. Look, I got a line on Jake Leibowitz. You boys interested? I could use some backup.”
Buccarelli’s eyes widened. “This a serious tip? Or a bullshit guess?”
Moodrow answered by getting into the back of the cruiser. “It’s decent,” he answered, closing the door. “Head for the Vladeck Houses. Building A.”
The problem was that he had no right to order these men around. If a detective needed help, he was expected to go through the sergeant. The line blurred in emergency situations, but the exact degree of cooperation varied with the mood of the patrolman. Moodrow was counting on a cop’s natural desire to be there for a big arrest. Jake Leibowitz was a star and the cops who took him down would bathe in his light.
“You want me to call it in?” Buccarelli asked. “Because what I’m thinking is the captain’ll wanna be present. I’m thinkin’ he’s gonna be mucho pissed if he doesn’t get an invite to this particular party.”
“Relax, Butch. What I got is a tip. It’s not like I spoke to Jake on the phone and traced back the number. What you oughta think about is what the captain’s gonna say if the whole precinct turns out for a false alarm.” Moodrow leaned back in the seat. “Of course, if you just wanna drop me off and go back on patrol, I promise I won’t hold a grudge.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence. Heavy rain continued to fall, pooling up on the East River Drive, forcing traffic to standstill. Fred Stone flipped on the roof light and worked his way onto the shoulder of the road. They weren’t going far, but the ride seemed endless to Moodrow. By the time they pulled up in front of the Vladeck Houses, he was half-convinced that Jake Leibowitz had packed his bags and gone.
“Who’s supervising in the field today?” he asked.
“Epstein.”
“All right, Butch. Get on the horn. Leibowitz is up in 678. I want the building surrounded. And tell Epstein to bring the tear gas. All the apartments have steel-covered fire doors and if I can’t talk him out, we’re gonna have a hell of a time getting inside.”
“Wait a second, Moodrow. Ten minutes ago, you told me to stay off the radio. Now you want the National Guard down here. What you’re doin’ is makin’ me look like an asshole.”
Moodrow put his hand on Butch Buccarelli’s shoulder and squeezed hard. “Tell ya what, Butch,” he said. “You wanna sit on your hands, it’s okay by me. But if Leibowitz goes out the side door while you’re jerkin’ off in the cruiser, you could forget about those sergeant’s stripes. Something else, too. A forty-five, like the one Leibowitz packs, can punch holes right through the side of this car. What’re you carrying? A six-shot thirty-eight? Do yourself a favor, Butch. Call it in to the sergeant. Let Epstein make the decisions.” He released Buccarelli’s shoulder and turned to Fred Stone. “You wanna come up with me, Freddy? You wanna play cops and robbers?”
“Just call me Dick Tracy.”
Fred Stone was twenty-three years old and looked seventeen. He had a heartbreaker smile and bedroom eyes to match. Both, Moodrow knew, masked a reckless attitude.
“Freddy,” Moodrow put his arm around the young patrolman’s shoulder as they walked away from the cruiser, “I’m gonna put you at the head of the stairs. Your first job is
to keep citizens off the sixth floor. Your second job is to keep Jake Leibowitz on the sixth floor. I don’t care what happens to me. I don’t care if I’m shot or if I disappear or if I scream for help. You don’t leave your post until the sergeant relieves you. Capish?”
“Yeah, sure. But what about you, Stanley? You gonna play Superman? You gonna crash through the door?”
“We’re talking about a steel-covered fire door, remember? It’d take me five minutes to get through it with a sledgehammer. No, Freddy, what I’m gonna try to do is talk him out. I’m gonna give him a chance.”
But what, Moodrow thought as they began to climb the stairs, am I gonna do if nobody answers my knock on the door? How will I know whether or not he’s in there? Do I kick the door down and walk into an ambush? Or do I wait for Epstein and let someone else do it?
Jake Leibowitz looked at the two mattresses covering the living-room windows and shook his head. What he needed was a hammer and nails, but a quick search of the apartment had failed to turn up so much as a screwdriver. The way he had them propped up on tables, the mattresses would most likely turn back a canister of tear gas. But if the cops opened up with shotguns … “The old bitch lived poor,” Jake said to himself. “She didn’t have nothin’.” And that was putting it mildly. If he had a china cabinet or a couple of bookcases or a triple dresser, he could wedge those mattresses in good. But, no, his Aunt Golda never had two nickels to rub together. That’s why she was in Bellevue Hospital instead of Mount Sinai. That’s why she was lying in her own shit instead of on starched white sheets.
“Well, whatta ya gonna do?” Jake asked. “Whatta ya gonna do?” He strolled down the short hallway to the bathroom and stepped inside. The single opaque window was shoulder height, exactly the way he wanted it. Jake raised the window a few inches, then drew Little Richard from his belt and aimed him at the neighboring rooftop forty feet away. The foot-high ledge wouldn’t offer much protection unless you were lying right against it. Which was also the way he wanted it.
Jake took a moment to imagine the rooftop covered with fat New York City cops. He imagined shooting them down. Bing! Bing! Bing! Like ducks in a shooting gallery. By the time the flatfoots zeroed in on his location, there’d be enough bodies to make it worthwhile. And that’s what it was all about. Because once Jake Leibowitz set Little Richard to singing his song, there was no turning back. Cop killers weren’t taken alive. That’s one of the reasons they became neighborhood legends.
Jake grabbed a couple of towels off the rack and tossed them over his shoulder. Later on, if they fired tear gas into the bedrooms, he’d stuff the towels under the doors. On a whim, he wedged Aunt Golda’s spectacles onto the bridge of his nose and peered at his mustache in the mirror.
“Not bad,” he decided. “Not perfect, but not bad.”
He strolled into the bedroom and yanked his aunt’s box spring off its metal frame, revealing five wooden cross-slats. He grabbed two of them and headed back to the living room where he knelt and jammed them under the doorknob.
“Maybe they’ll blow out the lock,” he said, “and try to bust through the door. How many could I get before they figure it out? Two? Three?”
He aimed Little Richard at the door, imagining the cops’ fear, imagining his.45 blasting away. Imagining the screams.
There hadn’t been any screams when he’d done poor Abe Weinberg. When he’d done his fucking buddy. Maybe that’s was the real reason he hadn’t gone out to Los Angeles like Steppy told him. The wops had asked him to sacrifice Abe and he’d done it. It was like a promise they’d made to him, a promise they didn’t bother to keep.
“Joe Faci told me that Abe would be the end of it.”
They could’ve skipped town right after they’d done the spic. All of them-Jake, Izzy and Abe. But Joe Faci said, “Take care of Abe. He’s got a screw loose somewhere. Y’understand? Take care of Abe and we’ll take care of you.”
Jake walked across the living room and opened an end table drawer. He took out his second gun and slipped it beneath his belt. Six spare clips, all full, lay in plain view on a small pile of old magazines. Sighing, he scooped them up and slipped three into each pocket of his jacket. Despite the fact that he knew they’d make his pockets bulge. That he’d look like a Jew pedlar from the old days instead of a successful gangster.
“Whatta ya gonna do?” he said, shaking his head sadly. “Whatta ya gonna fuckin’ do?”
As he and Fred Stone climbed toward the sixth floor, Stanley Moodrow found himself looking for Jake Leibowitz at every turning of the stairs. He recalled his earliest fights and the way his heart had punched at his ribs as he waited for the opening bell. What had he been afraid of back then? A broken nose? A swollen lip? It seemed like a joke, now. A joke in comparison with facing a Colt.45. Talk about a punch in the ribs. A.45 would turn your ribs into dominoes.
Moodrow pulled his.38 and slid it into the pocket of his overcoat. His already thin mouth tightened into a bloodless white line. For a moment, as they approached the door to the sixth-floor corridor, Moodrow felt something near to panic. His legs seemed to belong to someone else. They barely lifted him from one step to the next.
“Hold it a second, Fred.” Moodrow became aware of his hoarse whisper only after he’d spoken. “What we’re gonna do is prop the door open so you can stay here and still cover the apartment. Now, look, there’s only one way out of there. If he decides to use it, don’t shoot me.”
“C’mon, Stanley,” Stone said, smiling his sunniest, little-brother smile. “It’s just a tip. Besides, he can’t shoot through the wall, can he?”.
“Not through these walls,” Moodrow admitted. The Vladeck Houses, completed in 1940, had one thing in common with the most modern skyscrapers. They had steel fire-shields in the walls between apartments and the walls running along the common corridor. There were no fire escapes on the outside of the buildings, because the whole idea was to seal yourself in your apartment in case of fire. Unless, of course, the fire was in your apartment. Then, you ran like hell.
The net effect was to turn every apartment into a little fortress. If Jake refused to surrender, there was no easy way to get to him. In the tenements, a few blows with a sixteen-pound sledgehammer would bust through any wall. Here, you’d need a welder’s torch.
“I think you oughta take this seriously,” Moodrow said, surprised to find his voice much stronger. The simple fact was that he only had a few minutes before Epstein showed up and became the ranking officer on the scene. The captain would follow Epstein, along with several lieutenants. If the siege took any kind of time, the inspectors and the deputy chiefs would arrive with the reporters. By then, Stanley Moodrow would be little more than an innocent bystander.
“I am taking it seriously,” Stone insisted. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun.” He twirled his.38 on his index finger, still grinning madly.
Moodrow turned away in disgust. The trick, he knew, was to turn the fear into power, to aim the wasted energy at your opponent. He’d promised Greta that he’d try to talk Jake Leibowitz into surrendering. That didn’t mean he was obliged to go crashing through the door. It didn’t, as far as he was concerned, mean that he was obliged to take any risk at all. He was going to give Jake a chance at life, but if Jake refused, Mama Leibowitz would get her trip to the morgue after all.
He walked past the door to apartment 678 and stationed himself alongside it. Fred Stone, across the hall and twenty feet away, held his thumb up and winked.
“Go get him, Stanley. And don’t forget to jab.”
Moodrow shook his head. “After we take Mr. Leibowitz, I think I’m gonna celebrate by slapping your ass from here to Central Park.”
Moodrow pounded the door with the side of his fist, then quickly yanked his hand away. A second later, Jake Leibowitz emptied half a clip through the door. Moodrow watched five small mushrooms appear, one at a time, on the door’s steel sheath. He saw the mushrooms burst, saw tiny sharp points blossom on the ruptured metal
, saw five clouds of plaster explode from the opposite wall.
He saw all of it before he heard the sound of the shots. Or rather, the sound of the shot. Because what he heard was a single sharp crack, like the sound of Mickey Mantle’s bat hitting a Don Newcombe fastball. The echo was surprisingly short, but the emptiness that followed seemed to last forever.
Moodrow looked over at Freddy Stone. The young cop wasn’t smiling anymore. His mouth was agape, his eyes so wide his lashes merged with his eyebrows. The sight was comical, but Moodrow didn’t bother to smile.
“Hey, Jake,” he shouted through the door. “Does this mean you’re not gonna surrender?”
“Why don’t ya come in and find out for yourself? I was just settin’ up for tea and crumpets.”
Moodrow reached out, carefully twisted the doorknob, then gave a gentle push. The door was locked.
“I can’t join you unless you open the door, Jake,” he said calmly. “Your mother was much more hospitable.”
“How’d ya talk her into rattin’ on me? She told me ya gave her the third degree.”
“You believe that?” Moodrow paused for a moment, then continued. “What I did was show her a picture of Luis Melenguez’s body. I told her that’s what you’re gonna look like if you don’t give yourself up.”
A second volley of shots roared through the door. Moodrow felt a sharp pain on the left side of his cheek. His first thought was that he’d somehow been shot, but that was clearly impossible. He looked at the pock-marked wall across the corridor as if it might hold the answer, then reached up and touched a thin steel splinter protruding from his face.
“Damn,” he whispered, pulling it out. Now that he knew it wasn’t serious, it hurt all the more.
“Stanley, you’re bleedin’.”
Moodrow looked over at Freddy Stone. “Keep your mind on business, Freddy.”
“You talkin’ to me?” Jake Leibowitz asked. “Cause I can’t hear ya.”
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