Force of Nature

by Stephen Solomita

  “They had cartons of paper, Stanley,” she complained, accepting a cup of coffee (a signal, really, that they were there to work).

  “Literally. The complaint follow-ups were insane. ‘May 15. Called registered informant 5D461. No result.’ What’re they after, fame and glory? What’s the point?”

  “The point is not to get screwed by the department,” Moodrow said.

  “Really? I thought the point was to make the paperwork so complicated, no one ever got convicted.”

  “Not true,” Moodrow said. “Every cop has to account for all his time. Or her time. On patrol, you have your memo book. Which the patrol sergeant signs everyday. For a gold shield, it’s the DD-5, the complaint follow-up. If there’s no Five in the file, then what’d you do all day?”

  “Don’t forget the Dailies,” Higgins said slyly. “They give a pretty good idea of what you do with your time.”

  Moodrow turned red for a moment, then launched himself into the business at hand, explaining every move they’d made since their last meeting with her and Epstein. Higgins received it all calmly, asking Tilley a question or two about his adventure in the armory, then frowning when Moodrow described their subsequent treatment of Pinky Mitchell. After Moodrow finished, she thought for a few minutes while the name Paul Kirkpatrick continued to float in the air.

  “Do you have a copy of your Patrol Guide?” she asked, her voice soft and protective.

  Moodrow sat back in his chair, looking annoyed. “My Patrol Guide? I haven’t seen it in ten years.”

  “After we met last week,” Higgins continued in the same soft voice, “I went over the statutes to see if my ass was covered. It is. Then I checked on your position. According to the Patrol Guide, you’re supposed to report corruption or allegations of corruption directly to the Action Desk at Internal Affairs. Not to me or even to Epstein. Which means that you’re already in violation of department procedure.”

  “If Levander goes down,” Moodrow insisted, “it won’t matter. The papers’ll pick it up and the brass’ll go along with the hero bit. I’ve seen it a hundred times.”

  “And Kirkpatrick? When does he get it? If you don’t arrest Kirkpatrick, then you can’t allow Greenwood to surrender. Have you thought about that?” As she piled up the reasons, her voice rose. “Now you’re considering murder. Nothing new about that, right?”

  “You know what’ll happen if we turn Kirkpatrick over?” Moodrow changed the subject. “The headhunters will invade the precinct. Literally. They’ll go through every file. Put men on the street to observe the behavior of patrol officers at ‘known drug locations.’ Follow rookies into coffee shops to make sure they pay for their donuts. And most of all they’ll lean on Paul Kirkpatrick until he gives up names. Even if he has no names to give up. You think they’ll believe O’Neill didn’t know about it? Leonora, when those assholes come into a precinct, the first thing that stops is police work. And the first ones to get fucked are the citizens we’re supposed to protect.”

  “And what about Jim Tilley?” Higgins asked. “If something goes wrong, he’ll fall with you. Do I get the pleasure of preparing an indictment against him?”

  “He gets to make the decision,” Moodrow said flatly. “If he says I should give it over to I.A.D., I’ll make the phone call while you’re in the room.”

  Both heads swiveled toward the young cop. He was standing at the stove, pouring hot water onto instant coffee. His face was composed, relaxed…and in no way revealed the rage boiling inside. “Is someone here suggesting that Kirkpatrick gets off without paying for his part in the murders of three cops?” That was the other side of Moodrow’s “blue wall of silence.” The part that read “cop killers must pay.”

  “I thought about that,” Moodrow replied.

  “And?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.” He spread his arms wearily. “But I won’t let him walk away clean. I can’t.”

  “If you can’t bust him and you can’t cut him loose, what do you do? You can’t kill him. He’s a cop, not a black man with a history of extreme violence.” Tilley left the dilemma hanging and tossed the next question to Higgins. “How bad are we right now? Legally.”

  “Legally, you’ve got yourself covered by keeping the district attorney’s office up to date. I’ve got a file started with appropriate dates. The biker associated Greenwood with a cop, but we can say we got the actual name of the cop from an anonymous tip and that’ll get Pinky Mitchell out of it. In my opinion, you don’t have any legal problems, because without Mitchell, you don’t have probable cause to arrest Kirkpatrick. And, of course, you don’t have probable cause for Mitchell unless you give up the snitch who gave you his name. No, Moodrow, it’s not that you’ve committed a criminal act. You’re outside the law altogether. What you’ve got is NYPD problems.”

  “I agree with Moodrow,” Tilley said. “If we take Greenwood, they’ll buy all the bullshit about anonymous tips. We don’t hurt ourselves any worse by talking to Paul Kirkpatrick.”

  “And what if he doesn’t roll over?” Higgins asked. “What if he wants a lawyer?”

  “He’ll turn,” Moodrow said flatly and Tilley echoed the conviction. There was no doubt in either cop’s voice.

  “What about you, Leonora?” Moodrow asked. “You wanna come along with us?”

  Leonora shuddered. “Thanks for the invitation, but considering what you undoubtedly have in mind for Detective Kirkpatrick, I’ll settle for the role of ‘liaison.’ It’s sexier.”

  Higgins cocked her head and gave Moodrow her best “dead-eye” stare, but Moodrow was up to it. His return grimace held nothing but anticipation. It was the smile of a wolf when the shepherd abandons the flock.

  Then Higgins threw in the clincher. “There’s no reason why you can’t claim that you found Greenwood through an informant’s tip. Who’s to say otherwise? Kirkpatrick? You didn’t feel the tip had enough credibility to bother informing the task force. An error in judgment. So, sorry. Then let Greenwood give up Kirkpatrick and you’re out of it.”

  “And if Greenwood decides not to give up Kirkpatrick? If Greenwood decides to go down with the ship?”

  “Irish Allah, Stanley,” she returned. “As Allah wills.”

  29

  ACCORDING TO THE DUTY roster, Paul Kirkpatrick’s tour had two hours to run, but when Moodrow made a call to the 7th Precinct, headquarters for the Greenwood task force, he found only Steve Marisso, who was manning the twenty-four-hour hotline. It was a Friday afternoon and with all the evidence sifted through a dozen times, O’Neill and Kirkpatrick had given their men a weekend off. They tried Kirkpatrick’s home next, but there was no answer at his house on Staten Island or at three other addresses listed in the emergency file, which left them with nothing to do except call back every twenty minutes until he showed up somewhere. Higgins made the calls, pitching her voice up an octave while tossing in a thick Spanish accent. They wanted to find Kirkpatrick, not speak to him on the telephone and they were afraid that a man’s voice, followed by a hang-up or a “sorry, wrong number” would spook him into running.

  With nothing else to do, Moodrow and Higgins began to argue over the death penalty; she was for it and he didn’t give a shit. Tilley wandered around the kitchen. Heated water for coffee; cut an onion roll in half, smeared both sides with butter.

  “There is no way,” Higgins repeated for the fourth time, “that you can justify letting a man like Levander Greenwood continue on. His whole life is violence. Pain to others.”

  Tilley tuned them out; only vaguely heard Moodrow preach about the money involved in drugs. Money that allows twelve-year-olds to walk into school with 9mm automatics. He compared this phenomenon with the rush of oil wealth to the gulf states in the 70s, much of which flowed back to the West through arms deals. That sudden influx in wealth was supporting the arms industry, had shaped, if not actually created it.

  They went on and on and on. And Tilley knew it was all bullshit. Moodrow wanted to make ever
y street dealer into a millionaire, but the most dangerous junkies are the strung-out, destitute addicts who do virtually anything for a fix, especially rob and kill each other.

  But, Tilley supposed, there are worse ways to entertain yourself then playing devil’s advocate with an assistant D.A. twenty years your junior. The progress of an investigation is full of starts and stops. The closer you get to the quarry, the worse your nerves in the dead spaces. And the longer each step seems to take. Kirkpatrick didn’t show himself until nearly eight o’clock, when he finally picked up the phone at a First Avenue address. Higgins whispered something in Spanish, then hung up.

  “A man?” Moodrow asked.

  “Yeah,” Higgins responded. “Probably Kirkpatrick.”

  “Call again. See if you got the right number.”

  The man on the other end of the line must have asked what number Higgins wanted, because she began to rattle it off. “Tres, tres, quatro…” she stopped abruptly, then hung up. “He said I should shove the phone up my greaseball ass.”

  “That’s gotta be Kirkpatrick.” There was no humor in Moodrow’s voice. His eyes narrowed slightly and his hands clenched. Without another word to Leonora Higgins, he stood up and pulled on his jacket, instructing Tilley as he went. “I want you to handle him physically, Jimmy. Like we did with Pinky Mitchell. Remember, he’s got a piece on his hip. If he makes a move for it, you gotta stop him without killing him or fucking him up so bad, he can’t talk to us. Keep your eyes open. Stand close to him. Figure he’s smarter than he looks. And more desperate.”

  “Hey!” Higgins stopped them just as they got to the door. “You gonna say goodbye to me? And thank you?” She waited a second, then added. “Be careful, old man. I know you’ll run after Greenwood the minute Kirkpatrick gives you his location. Do me a favor, watch your ass.”

  “Goodbye, lady,” Moodrow said. Smiling for a change. “You sure you don’t wanna play cop for a little while?”

  “Not tonight. Call me when you need someone to pick up the pieces.”

  “You’ll be the first. Now do me one favor. After we leave, contact Epstein. Tell him what’s going on. If I tell him, he’ll take Kirkpatrick to I.A.D., but if we’re already into it, he’ll figure a way he can protect us if something goes wrong.”

  The address Kirkpatrick had left in the emergency file, on First Avenue, between 23rd and 24th Streets, sat directly across from the men’s shelter at Bellevue Hospital. The sooty brick building, a six story walk-up originally designed to attract the middle-class, had seen better days. Nevertheless, it was jealously guarded and Moodrow, armed with knife and screwdriver, could not get past the lock on the outer door. The two cops had to wait fifteen minutes for someone who lived there to arrive so they could follow him in. The old man who finally showed up looked at them dubiously, but couldn’t make either of them for muggers. He went to his first floor apartment with a half-smile on his face, grateful, probably, to see Moodrow and Tilley attack the stairs instead of him.

  Apartment 3A was a black door in a white plaster hallway. There was no rug on the wooden floor, nor any decoration on the walls, but everything was clean. A definite improvement for Tilley, considering the slums he’d been in recently. Neither one of them expected violence at this point, but they instinctively took positions on either side of the door before Moodrow gave it three sharp raps.

  “Who is it?” Kirkpatrick’s voice was strong, a cop asking questions. He slid the peephole cover aside, then repeated, “Who is it?”

  Moodrow stepped out where he could be seen. “It’s me, Paulie. Moodrow. Open up.”

  There was no place for Kirkpatrick to go. Nevertheless, he took the time to consider his position and when he opened the door, he tried to present the same confident cop who’d sat at Moodrow’s table discussing strategy. Unfortunately, his ashen face, a far departure from his usual florid complexion, gave his fear away.

  “Moodrow. What’re you doing here?” He glanced at Tilley out of the corner of his eye. The simple fact that they’d arrived on his doorstep without calling first, had to mean trouble.

  Moodrow pushed into the apartment and Kirkpatrick gave way as if he’d offered the invitation. Except for a tiny bedroom and an even smaller kitchen, the place, with its ancient furniture and gray threadbare rug, was almost identical to Moodrow’s on 11th Street. And must have been used for the same purpose.

  “What do you do here, Paulie?” Moodrow asked innocently. Kirkpatrick and Tilley were standing next to each other, Kirkpatrick with his jacket off, while Moodrow strolled into the bedroom.

  “It’s my girlfriend’s apartment.” He looked at Tilley and raised his hand apologetically. “My wife is sick. You know how it is. I gotta get it someplace.”

  The key to any interrogation is the first lie. It doesn’t matter how irrelevant the lie. Even if it has no bearing on the crime, it makes everything else a lie. Kirkpatrick should have known better, but lying comes by habit with criminals. That’s the whole point.

  “So where is she?” Moodrow asked. “I’d like to meet your girlfriend.”

  “She went to her mother’s for the weekend.”

  “Uh-oh.” Tilley could see and hear Moodrow opening the dresser drawers. “I don’t see no panties, Paulie.”

  “What?” Kirkpatrick was still looking at Tilley, but he turned at Moodrow’s question.

  “There’s no panties,” Moodrow repeated patiently. He held up an empty drawer for Kirkpatrick’s inspection, then put it back in the dresser. “There’s nothing in these drawers at all. You’re lying, Paulie. That ain’t right. Gimme your gun.”

  “Huh?”

  Suddenly Tilley realized that Kirkpatrick was nearly drunk. He hadn’t smelled it on the detective’s breath, but he picked up the odor of beer floating in from a box of garbage in the kitchen. Kirkpatrick’s piece, an ancient Smith & Wesson, was completely exposed on his left hip and Tilley kept himself close to it. Drunks are unpredictable. Sometimes they don’t give a shit.

  “Maybe she moved out on you.” Moodrow changed the subject without changing his deadpan expression. “Maybe that’s why the drawers are empty.” He sat on the bed, which nearly sagged to the floor. “Jesus,” he said, but stayed put, nonetheless. “No wonder your girlfriend took off, Paulie. You can’t fuck on a bed like this. It’s bad for your back.”

  “Hey, screw you, Moodrow,” Kirkpatrick growled. “I don’t need no hairbag busting my balls.”

  “Lemme have the gun, Paulie. For a little while. Then I’ll give it back.”

  “You want my gun, you scumbag?”

  His hand moved up to his waist and Tilley took the opportunity to make his presence felt. He drove his left hand into that basketball gut and Kirkpatrick stopped moving altogether. Just grunted, “Ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh,” as his lungs released air in little gasps. Tilley slid the .38 out of the rig on Kirkpatrick’s hip and passed it over to Moodrow, then gave the cop a thorough frisk.

  He was clean, but that didn’t mean his apartment was clean. While Moodrow waited patiently, Tilley sat Kirkpatrick down in a straight-back chair in the center of the living room, far from any potential weapon. By the time Tilley was finished, Kirkpatrick had recovered enough to speak. Surprisingly, he chose to come after Tilley, not Moodrow. “You little fuck,” he groaned. “You’re gonna pay for this. You assaulted a police officer.” He made no move to get off the chair, however, apparently satisfied to express his defiance verbally.

  Tilley ignored him, taking a second chair, a low stool, actually, and placing it to Kirkpatrick’s left and slightly behind him, while Moodrow set a rickety table and a greasy, blue armchair between himself and Kirkpatrick. Then Moodrow sat in the chair, displaying Kirkpatrick’s .38. “This is a wonderful piece,” he began. “You have it since the Academy?”

  Kirkpatrick didn’t answer, just stared back sullenly. Tilley let Moodrow ask the question again, but when Kirkpatrick still didn’t respond, he kicked the chair out from under him. Kirkpatrick wasn’t used to be
ing on that side of it. The rumor in the house was that he was brutal, that interrogation was his strong point and that O’Neill deliberately made himself absent so his partner could work.

  “You want more?” Tilley asked. “You wanna give me that look? I don’t like that look.” Kirkpatrick was on his knees, rising like a whale from the greasy carpet and Tilley slapped him with the back of his hand. A very quick, not very hard shot that let him know the young cop was so confident, he didn’t need to hurt him. He could humiliate him.

  “You’re crazy,” Kirkpatrick shouted, which is the highest compliment you can pay an opponent in a fight.

  Moodrow held the gun up again. It was a Smith & Wesson Police Special. At any given moment in New York, there are 26,000 men who own guns that are almost identical. The grip was worn smooth, but it looked clean. It looked ready to go.

  “So, did you get it when you were at the Academy? You drag it along all these years?”

  “Yeah.” Kirkpatrick, back in his seat, was trying to watch Moodrow and Tilley at the same time.

  “You musta changed barrels when you made detective, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then it’s not the same gun you had in the Academy.” Moodrow paused as if waiting for an answer, then launched into it again before his partner could move. “See, the same gun would have to have the same barrel. If you change the barrel, it’s not the same gun. That’s why you gotta change the info on your 10-Card. Don’t you agree?”

  Kirkpatrick didn’t wait to be prodded. “Whatever you say, Moodrow. You and your goon are in charge. Right now.”

  Moodrow ignored the last part. “Good. I’m glad we agree on something. Because it’s important that you should answer each question truthfully. So’s we don’t waste a lot of time.” Carefully, respectfully, he released the cylinder of the .38 and let it fall into his palm, then reversed it to let the bullets drop onto the table. It always works great in the movies, but this time two of the cartridges stuck in their chambers and Moodrow had to pull them out with a thumbnail. It was comic, but nobody laughed.