A Piece of the Action

Thirteen

January 17

Stanley Moodrow, sitting down to breakfast, knew he had to make a decision about Luis Melenguez. He’d been angry the night before, angry enough to threaten his benefactor, Pat Cohan. He’d also been shrewd enough to recognize (and enjoy) the fear his threat inspired. But that didn’t mean he would or should follow through. Sure, he wanted Kate Cohan. That was obvious. But he couldn’t see how investigating the murder of Luis Melenguez would result in the two of them walking down the aisle. In fact, no matter how Moodrow examined the situation, it seemed that tracking down Melenguez’s killer would have the opposite effect. Especially if Pat Cohan was trying to cover it up.

What he needed to do was think it out. The only problem was that he couldn’t manage to concentrate on anything more complex than the Daily News. His eyes scanned the paper while his brain spun like a raindrop in a tornado.

A Brooklyn judge named Leibowitz had ordered a special grand jury to investigate the practice of giving high school diplomas to kids who couldn’t read above the fifth-grade level. This was the same judge who’d charged the grand jury to investigate “the tide of terror and lawlessness” in Brooklyn schools, then later approved the grand jury’s recommendation that cops be stationed in every high school.

Moodrow started to lay the paper down when another headline caught his eye. Housing Board Bias Probe Is Voted by Wagner Group. The charge, “racial and religious discrimination” in the projects, was nothing new. When the first of the projects had gone up before WWII, they’d been used to service individual neighborhoods. On the Lower East Side, for instance, the Italians had gotten the Governor Smith Houses while the Jews had gotten the Jacob Riis Houses. The policy had seemed reasonable at the time, an attempt to keep neighborhoods and traditions intact. The only problem was that five hundred thousand impoverished Puerto Ricans had migrated to New York in the ten years following the war. More than a million blacks had come as well, fleeing southern poverty and Jim Crow legislation. The city had responded by constructing tens of thousands of low-income apartments, but no matter how fast projects went up, there were far more applicants than apartments. Waiting lists were created, lists based on ethnic, racial and neighborhood considerations. Now, the chickens were coming home to roost.

Moodrow discarded the Daily News and went to refill his coffee cup. It was funny, in a way. New York City, at least according to the newspapers and television, was a filthy, dangerous place. The schools, for instance, were so violent that Judge Leibowitz wanted cops stationed in every high school in Brooklyn. So why did Melenguez and half a million of his countrymen leave their homes to come here? And why did they stay? The Republicans blamed it on easy access to the welfare system, but there hadn’t been any welfare at the turn of the century when the Jews and the Italians arrived. Nor when the Irish and the Germans had come before them.

The answer, when Moodrow hit on it, was obvious enough. They were coming to occupy the same tenements that he intended to flee. If the Lower East Side was so horrible that a girl like Kathleen Cohan couldn’t be expected to live there, Luis Melenguez didn’t stay because he loved the Big Apple. He stayed because what he’d left behind was worse. Which was exactly why Moodrow’s own parents had come and stayed.

“Fuck them,” Moodrow said aloud. Fuck who? he thought.

Another idea popped into his mind before he could even consider the question: Luis Melenguez has a right to revenge. Because that’s what the cops really did. Ordinary citizens weren’t allowed to get even. If they tried it, they were subject to arrest. Punishment? Retribution? Justice? There was only one safe way for Joe Citizen to go and that was to the cops, the courts and the prisons.

But I could still make it right, he thought. If I go to Pat and apologize, if I promise to love, honor and obey …

Stanley Moodrow giggled, the sound spilling from his lips unbidden. The truth was that Pat Cohan was determined to break him. If he got the chance. The situation was funny, because he and Cohan were going to have to do a little dance while they slugged it out. They were going to dance a minuet around “darlin’ Kathleen,” neither sure of her reaction when she found out what was really happening.

And Kathleen Cohan wasn’t the only issue. Moodrow’s career, his very job was at stake. Detectives, third grade, didn’t challenge inspectors. Pat Cohan had a reputation as a man who always got even, no matter how long it took. Moodrow had threatened to break the Inspector’s bones. He’d questioned Pat Cohan’s physical courage, the ultimate slight to every cop’s self-image. Inspector Pat Cohan wouldn’t react to the insult by meeting Stanley Moodrow in some back alley. He’d either wait for Stanley Moodrow to make a mistake, to drop his guard, or he’d try to set him up.

“He thinks he’s got all the ammunition,” Moodrow said aloud. And that was obvious, too. Cohan’s arrangement with Patero was basically unprovable. Especially considering that he, Moodrow, had a personal interest. Any charge he leveled at Cohan would be extremely suspect. Cohan, on the other hand, could use Patero (and God only knew who else) as an instrument of revenge.

What you are, Stanley, he thought, is a schmuck. You’re supposed to lead with your left, not with your chin.

He should never have challenged Cohan directly. He should have retreated, begged for mercy, promised to reform. He should have played for time while he gathered ammunition of his own.

And that was assuming there was anything out there to gather. Because it was just possible that Pat Cohan hadn’t been lying about Luis Melenguez. In fact, it was more than possible that Cohan was simply repeating what Sal Patero had told him. Cohan’s office was down on Centre Street, not in the 7th Precinct, and Cohan’s job was purely administrative. He played no direct part in the investigation of criminal complaints.

Still without any clear line of action, Moodrow went to the phone, called the 7th Precinct, and told the duty sergeant that he wouldn’t be coming to work.

“A personal matter,” he explained before hanging up. One good thing about his job as Patero’s assistant: no cop below the rank of captain had the guts to challenge him.

He went back to his bedroom and looked out the window. It was eight-thirty and the streets were alive with workers trudging through the remains of yesterday’s snowstorm. Moodrow noted the coats buttoned to the throat, the caps pulled down low to cover the ears. Well, he could deal with the cold. He laid out a set of long johns and two pair of heavy wool socks, then began to dress.

The doorbell rang while he was buttoning his shirt. For a fleeting moment, he managed to conjure up a picture of Kate Cohan standing on the other side. Then he returned to reality.

“Hello, Greta,” he said, as he swung the door inward.

“Stanley, how are you this morning?”

“I’ve been better. C’mon in.” The truth was that he had no way to keep her out and he knew it. “You want coffee?”

“Please.”

He poured out the coffee, then waited for her to speak first. He didn’t have to wait long.

“So what did you find out?”

“About what?” If he couldn’t actually discourage her, he could at least break her chops.

“About Luis Melenguez, of course. His wife went home yesterday.”

“I’m sorry about the other day, Greta. I didn’t want to hurt Mrs. Melenguez, but I was only repeating what I was told.”

“I understand. And I’m also apologizing if I said anything nasty. So, nu, what did you find?”

“Look, Greta, you’ve got to try to understand that I’m just starting out in the detectives. I got no connections for information. I got no informants out on the street, either. I’m not gonna argue that Melenguez was a pimp. I know he wasn’t. For whatever reason-and I don’t know the reason-the lieutenant decided to lie to me. The only thing is that I’m not sure what I can do about it. If anything.”

“Please, Stanley, you shouldn’t get so discouraged. Let me tell you a story.”

“You always do.”

Greta was the only person Moodrow knew who spoke in parables. And it was impossible to discourage her. She was incredibly strong-willed, as were most of the women his mother knew. Maybe the simple fact of their gender made them even stronger. They couldn’t get their way by ranting and raving the way men did when they were angry. The women persisted, no matter what obstacles were thrown in their way.

“Do you know how your grandmother died, Stanley?”

Moodrow felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise. “I know she died twenty years before I was born. My mother never talked about it.”

“Your grandmother’s name was Trina. She came here from Poland when your mother was only a few months old. Came with her brother and his wife. She had no husband, because he’d been taken into the Polish army right after Trina became pregnant and from there nobody knows what happened to him. The army told the family he was dead, but in those days men who went into the Polish army seldom returned anyway. I don’t want to make such a long story that you miss your lunch, but …”

“Just say what you have to say, Greta.” Moodrow had spent a good part of his life avoiding Greta’s stories, but this time he was all ears.

“After she got settled, Trina went to work like everybody else. She got a job as a helper in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory across the street from Washington Square. When I tell you this job was hell, you should believe me. The girls were paid according to how much they did and Trina had to bring work home to make four dollars a week. The factory was, you should pardon the expression, a shithole. Fabric piled everywhere. Lint and dust so thick you couldn’t see from one wall to the other. The owner paid off the fire inspectors so that when there came a fire in 1911, the workers couldn’t get out. The emergency exits were chained because the boss didn’t want the girls to sneak off. Why the boss should worry that girls would sneak off I can’t understand, since they were getting paid according to how much work they did and not by the hour, but that’s the way it was. The fire only lasted eighteen minutes, but a hundred and forty-six workers died, most of them young Jewish and Italian girls. The flames were so hot the workers jumped out the windows to escape. Your grandmother was one of the women who jumped.”

“What happened to the owner?”

“Nothing happened except he lost his factory. You can’t look at these things like it was today, Stanley. The bosses were kings in 1911. They paid off the police and the firemen and the politicians. When the workers tried to organize, the strikebreakers attacked the picket lines and the police sat on their horses and laughed. Or they joined in with their billy clubs. And this is the point I’m making here. Your mother was only fifteen when the union put her to work as an organizer. She was so young and pretty, the bosses didn’t suspect her. But on the picket lines she was a demon. What I’m telling you now, I saw with my own eyes. So many times she had her head cracked I couldn’t even count them. And she gave as good as she got. One time I remember like it was yesterday. The cops were driving their horses into the picket line, hammering the workers with their clubs. Your mother pushed a hatpin into the horse’s tuchis. I’m telling you, Stanley-right in there. The horse jumped up and the cop fell off. He fell into a circle of strikers. That day we got even a little.”

“I don’t know anything about this.”

“That’s the point. Your mother was not a young girl when you were born. She was almost thirty and she figured she’d done her duty. The garment workers were mostly organized by then, anyway. What was the point of looking for trouble? She decided to stay home with you while you were young. Then came the war and everybody went off to fight Hitler.”

Moodrow refilled Greta’s cup without asking. He put a few jelly doughnuts on a plate and set them out on the table.

“My mother must have been pretty disappointed when I became a cop,” he said.

“If she was, she didn’t say anything to me about it. I think by that time she was just happy you weren’t going to be a boxer. She was afraid you were some kind of a savage. Also, times had changed. When there came a strike, the cops protected the workers instead of attacking them. And remember, your father’s brother was a policeman and your mother knew he wasn’t a bad man.”

“Greta, I know I asked you this before, but what do you expect me to do here? About Melenguez. I …”

Greta Bloom, straightening up in her chair, seemed to transform herself. The kindly neighbor disappeared and her eyes grew hard. “Nothing happens without risk. When your grandmother died, your mother could have said, ‘See, this is what happens. This is the way it is. What can I do about it?’ Instead, she fought back. That thing with the horse? It didn’t just happen. She brought the hatpin with her, because she knew the cops would use their horses and there was no other way to bring the horses down. Now, I have to go. I got the laundry and my shopping to do. Plus, I also have a Hadassah meeting at the shul. I tell you, Stanley, I’m busier now in my old age than when the children were young.”

“Wait a minute, Greta. This time I have a question for you. Did you tell these stories to your own children? I mean your kids went to City College. They’re professionals. Now they live out on Long Island somewhere.”

Greta Bloom sighed. “I told them, but they don’t wanna know from the old days. What’s the use of complaining? Every time I turn around, somebody’s kids are moving out. But you, Stanley, you’re different. You’re a fighter like they never were. You could understand what I’m trying to say. Luis Melenguez’s killer should not go unpunished.”