A Piece of the Action

Nineteen

January 20

“Stanley, I’m heating up my world-famous cheese blintzes. You’re maybe interested in one or two?” Greta Bloom set a mug of coffee in front of her guest, then turned back to the stove.

“I’d be more interested in ten or twelve,” Moodrow said, pouring cream into his mug. “How come you’re not making me use that white powder in my coffee?”

Greta shook her head. “From kosher you’ll never learn. I’m making blintzes. That’s dairy. With dairy you can have cream. So, how many blintzes should I put up?”

“A dozen’ll do.”

“Just like your father. Max wasn’t as big as you, but no one could fill him up, either.” She turned back to the stove, then began to giggle. “I just remembered a story about your mother and father. You wanna hear?”

“As long as you don’t forget the food.”

Greta pushed a cookie sheet dotted with cheese blintzes into the oven and closed the door. “Your mother was a very pretty girl. Even with a ring on her finger, men didn’t leave her alone. As it happened, we were working in a loft on Grand Street, sewing lace onto satin wedding gowns. This was considered skilled work by the bosses and the pay was good for that time. Anyway, there was a foreman in the loft named Kawitzski. A brute, Stanley, and always making remarks to the girls about coming into the storeroom. He went crazy for your mother. Every minute he was standing by her machine.”

“Wait a second. My mother was married at this time? Or single?”

“Married. And practically a newly wed. You can believe me when I say Nancy Moodrow had no use for Kawitzski. But what could she do except laugh it off? It was common for men in the garment business to makes passes at the girls. Bosses? Foremen? They strutted like Cossacks in a peasant’s cottage. A few of the girls went along, too. It means a lot to get the better jobs when you’re doing piecework. But that’s neither here nor there. One day this Kawitzski touched your mother in a way he shouldn’t have. It was not a thing you could throw off with a laugh. When your mother left work, she was so mad that she told your father what happened the minute he got home.”

“Pop always had a temper. What’d he do, kill the guy?”

“Killing is what he wanted to do, but like I already said, this Kawitzski was a brute. He saw your father coming and hid behind a door. When your father walked past, Kawitzki jumped out and hit him a tremendous punch. Down goes your father and Kawitzki starts to jump on top, but Nancy has a little trick of her own. Five rolls of pennies in a tiny purse. She hit Kawitzki such a blow I don’t think he woke up to this day. Then we all ran out before the cops came. Your father was so mad he didn’t talk to your mother for a week. Everybody was laughing at him for hiding behind a woman’s skirts.”

Moodrow blew on the steaming coffee, then sipped carefully. “I never got to know my father. He was always out working and he died before I was old enough to really talk to him. It was different with my mother. Especially after my father passed. I was serious about my boxing at that time, so I didn’t go out much. Between school and training, I had no time for a social life.” He hesitated for a moment, took the mug in his hands, then set it down. “I think what I’m trying to say is that I miss her. Things fall away and you can’t get them back. It makes you crazy if you think about it too much.”

“I miss her, too, Stanley.” Greta took the blintzes out of the oven and set them on top of the stove. “To tell you the truth, the way I feel this morning, pretty soon I’ll miss myself.” She crossed to the refrigerator, took out a bowl of sour cream and put it on the table. “Nu, so tell me. With the case, what’s happening?”

“I kind of messed it up.” Moodrow dug out the sketch of Santo Silesi and laid it on the table. “This guy’s first name is Santo. He’s a small-time heroin dealer. The men who killed Luis Melenguez work for Santo’s boss. What I’m trying to do is locate Santo so I can ask him a few questions, but I think I’m going about it the wrong way.”

“You’re going about it how?”

“The story I got from O’Neill …”

“O’Neill?”

“O’Neill ran the house of prostitution where Luis was murdered. The killers were there to teach O’Neill a lesson and Luis Melenguez walked into the middle of it. O’Neill gave me a statement, but you can forget about him testifying in court. He’s running for his life.”

“You’re a cop, Stanley. You could protect him.”

“I could if there weren’t other cops protecting his killers. You think those blintzes are ready?”

Greta forked several blintzes onto a plate and passed them over. “Stanley, would the cops doing this protecting be somehow related to your father-in-law?”

“I’m not married, Greta. I’m engaged.”

“Don’t be technical. Answer the question, please, or tell me I should mind my own business.”

“Yes, my father-in-law is protecting the killers. And you should mind your own business.” Moodrow cut a blintz in two, covered the half on his fork with sour cream and popped it into his mouth. “I spent most of yesterday knocking on doors in the projects where I think Santo works. I didn’t run into anyone I know and I didn’t get anywhere, either. I’m gonna go about it a little different today. I’m gonna visit some of the guys I grew up with and some of the guys I met when I was boxing. Even if nobody recognizes the picture, I’ll still be ahead of the game, because at least I can be sure I’m not being lied to.”

“To me it sounds good.” Greta said, shoveling blintzes onto Stanley Moodrow’s plate. “And I hope things work out with Kate. It’s not your fault her father’s a crook.”

The phone rang before Moodrow closed the door behind him. What he wanted to do was let it ring, to grab his gun, badge and coat, then get on the street where he could work. Unfortunately, the caller, almost as if he could read Moodrow’s mind, refused to hang up.

“Yeah?”

“Stanley, it’s Allen Epstein. I been phoning every ten minutes. Where you been?”

“I been having breakfast with my girlfriend.”

“Is Kate there?”

“Just kiddin’, Sarge. What’s up?”

“The pimp and his wife are dead. The cops in the Tenth found them last night. The way I hear it, the apartment was a slaughterhouse. There was blood in every room, even the toilet.”

“Sounds like somebody put up a fight.”

“Yeah, but not the pimp. He was sitting on the couch when the killer sliced his throat. It must have been his old lady. She was stabbed twenty-seven times.”

“Any chance the killer was injured? Any chance some of that blood was his?”

“It’s too early to know. With that many samples, the lab’ll need at least three days to separate them out. Anyway, I got something better than blood. There was a witness.”

“You’re bullshitting.”

“Oh, so I got your attention, eh?”

“Don’t play with me, Sarge.”

“Awright, I don’t have a name or an apartment number. I don’t even know if it was a man or a woman. What I do know is the witness lives in the building. Apparently, the killers made a lotta noise and the witness opened the door as they were leaving.”

“Ya know somethin’, Sarge,” Moodrow said after a moment, “this doesn’t have to work in our favor. If Patero and Cohan find out there’s a witness, they’re gonna pass the information on to Accacio. Any idea who caught the squeal?”

“Not yet, but soon.”

“So we don’t know if the witness is being protected or not.”

“Protection can work both ways, too. Whatta you lookin’ for, a guarantee?”

“No guarantee, Sarge. But I’m not gonna sit on my ass, either. I’m heading out to work.”

“Can’t wait to get busy, right?”

“Right.”

“It’s kinda funny you haven’t asked me about getting a look at the mug shots.”

Moodrow hesitated for a moment, then laughed. “You should’ve been a cop, Sarge. You got natural suspicion.”

“Forget the bullshit, Stanley. What’s goin’ on?”

“I already have what I need. I went to an artist I know and had him make a sketch. It’s not a photo, but it’ll do for a start.”

“I take it you don’t trust me, Stanley. Being as you didn’t mention this before.”

Moodrow took his time answering. When he finally spoke, his voice was cold. “Up until right now, I didn’t trust anybody. Not you. Not anybody. But if you were in bed with Patero and Cohan, you never would’ve told me about this witness. Or about the O’Neills, either. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, but I know what I have to do and I’m gonna do it the way I see it.”

It was Epstein’s turn to think it over. He waited a long time, until Moodrow was ready to hang up, before he finally spoke. “I guess I can’t blame you. The way you went from walking a beat to the bullshit you’re in now would shake anybody up. Most likely it would’ve worked out better if you’d spent the first five years of your career learning the politics of the job instead of waltzing around a boxing ring. But what’s done is done. You still wanna get inside the precinct?”

“It depends on whether I have any luck on the street. What I’d like to do, assuming I can’t find Santo by myself, is give you the sketch and let you go through the books. It can’t hurt if Patero and Cohan think I’m sitting on my hands. If they think I’m scared shitless.”

“All right, Stanley. But one piece of advice before you hit the bricks. You’re gonna need friends if you expect to get through this in one piece. And I’m in a much better position to know who to trust. I’ve been living with the bullshit for a long time. If I tell you somebody’s okay, they’re okay.”

“Yeah? You sayin’ you wanna come out in the open on this? You wanna put your name right next to mine on Inspector Pat Cohan’s shit list?”

“If you’re asking me to step into your shoes, the answer is ‘go fuck yourself.’ What you have to realize is that you can’t do it yourself. Once you get that tiny little thought firmly planted in your tiny little brain, you’ll stop taking so many punches.”

Moodrow, stepping out onto the street, looked up at an overcast sky and shook his head. After weeks of freezing days and below-freezing nights, it was finally warming up. That was the good news. The bad news was that it’d be raining by noon. And it’d probably keep raining until strong Canadian winds pushed the soup back toward Virginia where it belonged.

It was eight o’clock in the morning and Moodrow was headed for Berrigan’s, an amateur boxing gym on Allen Street that had to work around school schedules in order to train its aspiring champions. The gym was run by Father Samuel Berrigan, a no-nonsense Catholic priest who used early-morning workouts as a way to separate the serious from the merely foolish. He lectured his boys constantly, insisting that the most important factor in a fighter’s career was simple desire. Stanley Moodrow had been his favorite example.

“He’s slow. He’s ugly. He fights with his face. Stanley has no right to win, but he wins anyway. That’s because he wants to win. He desires victory.”

By the time Moodrow ran into a fighter with equal desire and far more talent, he’d moved through several trainers, leaving Father Sam far behind.

The gym was open and functioning when Moodrow walked through the door. There were fighters on both speed bags, sharp middleweights competing with each other to make the bag dance. Moodrow watched them for a minute, then drifted over to a boxing ring in the center of the gym. The two kids sparring inside couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds, but they were giving it all they had. The shorter of the two, stocky and short-armed, was bobbing and weaving frantically. The other kid was firing one jab after another, following each jab with a crisp left hook or a straight right hand. The only problem was that the short kid didn’t know how to close the space between himself and his opponent, while the taller kid didn’t have the timing to hit a moving target.

“I do believe those boys’re doin’ the lindy hop. There’s no way you could call it boxing.” Father Sam was short and bow-legged. He’d been a fighter before he’d turned to the priesthood and his rapport with the tough, street-wise boys of the Lower East Side was legendary. His gym was open to everyone and many a Jewish father had dragged his troubled son through Father Sam’s door.

“I can remember when you trained ’em to be a lot meaner,” Moodrow said, turning away from the ring.

“You can’t teach mean, Stanley. Can’t teach brave, either. I saw your last fight.”

“Against the fireman?”

“Yeah. Pure desire. It made me proud. What’re you doin’ here. You slummin’?”

“I’m lookin’ for somebody.”

“One of my boys?”

“No.” Moodrow fished Santo’s sketch out of his jacket pocket and passed it to the priest. “This guy’s dealing dope somewhere in the neighborhood, probably out of the projects by Avenue D.”

“What’d he do, kill somebody?”

“Dope dealing’s not enough?”

“It’s enough, Stanley. It’s enough to mess up more than one of my boys. Only I didn’t think you cops gave a damn. Being as they’re dealin’ it right out in the open.”

“Look, Father, I can’t speak for the entire Department. No more than you can speak for Cus D’Amato.” Cus D’Amato, Floyd Patterson’s manager, refused to let the champion fight serious contenders, preferring rank amateurs and club fighters. The sportswriters never lost an opportunity to rake him over the coals. “But you’ve known me for a long time, so you can believe me when I tell you that the people I’m after need to be taken off the street. Permanently.”

The priest took Moodrow’s arm and pulled him to one side of the gym. “Now, Stanley, I know you’re talkin’ justice here, but it seems more like a favor to me. Of course, people in the community should be doin’ favors for each other. It’s the neighborly thing, right? Now, I’ve got this Jewish boy. Joseph is his name. Joseph Green. The boy got himself in a little trouble. Drinkin’ is what it was. He got so drunk, he smacked a cop.”

“The cop was in uniform?”

“ ’Fraid so.” The priest shrugged. “Joey’s not a bad kid. Stupid, yes, but not really bad.”

“Is he charged with assaulting a police officer?”

“Yeah, that’s it. They’re gonna give the boy hard time if he goes to court and loses. The boy doesn’t deserve hard time just for smackin’ somebody. I don’t care if it was a cop. People down here smack each other all the time.”

“Was the cop hurt bad?”

“Now, that’s the thing. Joey knocked the cop down and he hit his head on the sidewalk. I understand there were some stitches involved.”

“What’s the kid’s name again?”

“Joe Green.”

“Okay, Father. I’ll ask around, find out what’s happening. Maybe I know the cop.”

“Go see the boy, Stanley. Talk to him. He’s not a bad kid. Just stupid, like I said.”

“I’ll do what I can, but don’t expect miracles. If he’s got a record, he’s goin’ away.” Moodrow held up Santo Silesi’s picture. “You know this guy or not?”

“Well,” the priest scratched his head, then smiled, “I don’t believe he shows up for the six-thirty Mass at St. Ann’s.”

“This is serious, Father. If you don’t wanna bother, don’t waste my time.”

“Patience, Stanley. Isn’t that what I taught you? Slow fighters have to be patient. Now, it happens there’s a boy changing up in the locker room named Henry Sanchez. He lives in those projects. If you think you can refrain from callin’ him ‘Chico,’ we could ask him to look at your picture.”

“I’ll do my best.”

They walked through the gym, Father Sam leading the way, to a small locker room at the far end of the building. Henry Sanchez was pulling on his shoes when they entered the room. He looked up, glanced at Moodrow, then turned to his trainer.

“Wha’s up, Father.”

“Give me the picture,” the priest said, pulling it out of Moodrow’s hand. “You recognize this man, Henry?”

Sanchez took his time studying the sketch, then handed it back to his trainer. “Why you wanna know?”

“It has nothing to do with me,” Father Sam said. “This here’s Stanley Moodrow. He used to fight for me. Now, he’s a police officer. Stanley’s looking for the man in that picture. Says that man’s dealing dope in the projects.”

“Tha’s funny,” Sanchez said, staring straight up at Moodrow, “I been thinkin’ the cops don’ arres’ no dealers. The headknockers only arres’ the junkies.”

“Now, that’s your whole problem, Sanchez. That’s why you can’t learn to hook off the jab. You think you know all there is to know. I’m tellin’ you that Stanley’s on the up and up.”

“I still wanna know is he gon’ to arres’ this man?”

“Look, Henry,” Moodrow interrupted, “There was a killing on Pitt Street the day after Christmas. The victim’s name was Luis Melenguez. The man in the sketch, his first name is Santo, knows who the killers are. If I find Santo, I’ll find the killers. Simple as that.”

Sanchez took a minute to think it over. “Tha’s the name,” he finally said. “Santo. Every day he’s bringin’ dope to the projects. I seen him down by tha’ little park on Houston Street. Near the river.”

“Any special time?”

“Mos’ly I seen him when I’m comin’ back from school. But, like, he ain’ punchin’ no clock.”

“He come alone?”

“Si. Only I ain’ watchin’ thees maricon every minute.”

“All right, thanks Henry. I appreciate the information.”

Moodrow headed for the door, Father Sam trailing behind. “Slow down, Stanley,” the priest demanded. “You were never in a hurry when you were trainin’ for me.”

“Sorry. I can’t think about anything but what I have to do.”

“You were like that as a fighter, too. That’s why you won. Lord knows, you didn’t have any talent.”

Moodrow turned to face the smaller man. “Is there a point here, Father?”

“Now, don’t go workin’ yourself up. Just think about how easy it was for you to waltz in here and find out what you needed to know. This gym could be a real nice connection for a cop like yourself. A cop with desire.”

“Enough with the lecture. Whatta you want?”

The priest managed a beatific grin. “What I’m gettin’ at is how I could use some help. Somebody with desire to show these boys the fundamentals. Every time I turn around, they’re out there smokin’ marijuana cigarettes. Or some gangster is tryin’ to make ’em turn pro before they’re ready. Could be if you start comin’ down regular, you’d be doin’ yourself a favor.”