A Piece of the Action

Thirty-four

When the phone rang, Jake Leibowitz was having the time of his life. He was in the bathroom, trimming his mustache, a mustache he could actually see for a change. One of the first things he’d done upon arriving at his Aunt Golda’s apartment was rummage through the drawers and closets. He’d done it more out of habit than anything else (after all, what in the world could he possibly find that’d help him out of this pickle), discovering an ancient pair of wire-rimmed spectacles in a night table drawer. The glasses were so thick, Jake’d had to put his face right up against the mirror in order to see anything, but, still, once he’d done that, his mustache had leaped into sharp focus.

It’d been amazing. Like being down at the track with a good pair of binoculars. Just spin the little knob and … Pow! Individual black hairs had jumped out at Jake Leibowitz like neatly stacked prison bars. He hadn’t minded the fact that he could barely get the scissors between his face and the mirror. Nor the fact that the scissors were so dull they refused to cut, pressing down on the hairs like a tiny curling iron. Seeing was enough to keep him happy.

What he’d done was sharpen the scissors against the concrete sill outside the bathroom window. It’d been a slow process, but he had nothing, but time, anyway. Besides, the work had reminded him of the old days in Leavenworth.

How many shivs had he made? Only to have them eventually confiscated? Only to make another?

“I must’a made a hundred of ’em,” he’d said out loud. “I must’a made a thousand. One for every day I done in the hole. What’s the old saying? ‘Better the man should catch me with it, than the boys should catch me without it.’ I don’t know who made that up, but he must’a been a fuckin’ genius.”

Once he’d gotten the mustache looking halfway decent, he’d gone to his teeth. Taking them one at a time. Polishing each tooth as if he was washing windows in the Leavenworth administration building. Then he’d gone to the small hairs in his nose, then to his eyebrows, then to his ears.

When the telephone rang, he was so deeply engrossed that he jumped back as if he’d been slapped. Aunt Golda’s glasses slipped off the bridge of his nose, crashing to the tile floor. He knelt quickly, ignoring the phone. Scooping up the glasses and holding them against his forehead as he anxiously peered into the mirror.

“Jeez,” he said, “that was a close one.”

But it was all right. Only a small crack up a corner of the right lens. Which was just as well, because he didn’t have his mustache perfect yet. Not quite perfect.

The phone continued to ring and Jake continued to stare at his reflection. He wasn’t in any hurry, because he already knew who it was. Anyone but his mother would’ve hung up a long time ago.

“Awright, awready,” he called, sliding the spectacles into his shirt pocket.

Mama Leibowitz had been calling every few hours. Detailing her adventure with Santo Silesi. Hadn’t she ever heard of tapped phones? If the flatfoots were listening, she’d be a candidate for the electric chair. Despite the wound in her skull. Despite being a fat old lady with a heart condition.

But he couldn’t discourage her, couldn’t get through. She talked about killing Santo Silesi the way she’d talked about her new fur coat. Bragging about it.

“Jake, you should have seen the look on his face. Like he opened the closet and out came Dracula.”

Jake strolled over to the phone and picked it up. “Yeah, ma,” he sighed.

“Jakeleh, I told them where you are. The coppers. I told them.”

“Jeez, ma, what’d ya do that for? I was thinkin’ about skippin’ town.”

The real question was why he’d hung around with her all this time. That was the biggest mistake he’d ever made. Bigger than tryin’ to get in with the guineas. Hangin’ out with a crazy woman must’ve made him crazy, too.

“They beat me, Jake. They burned me with cigars. They kicked me when I fell on the floor. It was terrible, Jake. I could barely walk.”

“Ya forgot the rubber hose.”

“Pardon?”

“What I’m sayin’ is ya sound pretty good for a cripple.” Not that it mattered.

Crazy people did crazy things. Look at him. What he should’ve done was go out to Los Angeles. He should’ve done what Steppy Accacio told him to do. Hell, he should’ve done what that drill sergeant told him the day he’d stepped off the bus at Fort Dix. But the past didn’t matter, either. The cops were coming and he was gonna die and that was that.

“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.”

“Say, Jake,” Moodrow called. “Do you want me to go through the deal about how you’re surrounded? About how there’s a hundred cops out here? About how they’ve got submachine guns and shotguns and tear gas?”

“Don’t bother. I could’a run when my old lady called, but I didn’t. What I want is that you should try to take me. I don’t care how many cops ya got out there, ya could only come through that door one at a time. Ya listenin’, flatfoot? I don’t care if ya got a fuckin’ army out there. Ya gotta come through one at a time.”

Moodrow saw the door behind Freddy Stone open wide. A dozen uniformed cops poured through. Half of them took up stations near the stairs. The other half ran past him to the far end of the hall. Moodrow closed his eyes as they came abreast of Jake Leibowitz’s door.

“Stanley. Come over here.”

Moodrow looked up to find Allen Epstein beckoning to him. “Whatta ya want, Sarge?” He wasn’t about to cross that doorway.

“C’mere, for Christ’s sake.”

Jake Leibowitz chose that moment to send another volley through the door. Moodrow watched Epstein’s eyes squeeze shut. The uniforms in the hallway dropped to one knee and aimed their service revolvers in his direction. As if, in the absence of a preferred target, they’d decided to shoot him. It wasn’t until Captain McElroy appeared in the doorway that he was sure they wouldn’t open fire.

“Any bodies out there?” Jake called.

“Not yet,” Moodrow answered. “But I’m glad to see you’re interested.”

McElroy tiptoed up to the doorway. “Can you keep him talking?” he whispered. “Keep him distracted? We need about fifteen minutes to evacuate the floor and set up on the rooftops.”

“I’m not gonna stay here another fifteen seconds unless you get these assholes to point their weapons at the floor.”

McElroy looked down the hallway as if seeing it for the first time. “Whatta you plan to do,” he roared, “shoot me? Lower your weapons.”

The cops complied instantly, their fear of authority considerably greater than their fear of Jake Leibowitz. Jake, on the other hand, responded by firing several shots through the door. McElroy didn’t even blink. He’d come up in the days when social workers and bleeding-heart liberals had about as much influence in city politics as the toilet bowls in Tammany Hall. When Hell’s Kitchen was still called the Tenth Ward and breaking heads was the answer to every problem.

“Fifteen minutes,” McElroy repeated. “I’m not gonna let this drag out. I want Leibowitz before the reporters show up.”

“Look, captain, I think if we let him sit for a while, he’ll come out of there. I guarantee he can cover the roofs from inside. If you put an army of cops up there …”

“Shut up, Moodrow.” McElroy jammed his fists into his hips. “I’ve had enough of your bullshit to last a lifetime. I’m ordering you to submit. Do you understand what I’m saying? You are not the fucking commissioner. You do not set policy in my precinct. You’re a piece-of-crap detective, third grade. A monkey in a suit. When I play my accordion, the monkey always dances. Always.”

“I understand.” There wasn’t anything else Moodrow could say. Jake Leibowitz had fifteen minutes and that was that. “Do you bring any tools with you?”

“What?” McElroy’s posture hadn’t changed. He was still livid.

“I could use a four-pound hammer. To hold his attention while you get ready to kill him.”

Jake Leibowitz, peering through his bathroom window, couldn’t help but smile. The six-story buildings making up the Vladeck Houses were joined to each other in rows. Only, instead of laying the buildings end-to-end, the architect had connected the buildings at forty-five degree angles, giving the project a weird, saw-toothed appearance. It was stupid, really, because the arrangement left half the windows in permanent shadow. Maybe the builder was trying to save money. Just the way he’d saved money by letting one stairwell serve an entire line of roofs.

Whatever the reason, that last part was good for Jake Leibowitz and he knew it. The small brick tower that housed the stairwell would have provided excellent cover if it hadn’t been more than eighty feet away from the roof that overlooked his apartment. Not that it would actually be impossible to shoot from behind the stairwell, but the angle was wrong. Even a sharpshooter with a telescopic sight wouldn’t be able to cover more than a tiny part of Jake’s window.

“They gotta come to me,” Jake laughed. “They gotta.”

And they did. Picking their way along the tar-covered roofs as if they were tiptoeing over hot coals. God, but it was stupid. Big, blue-uniformed men carrying Thompsons and shotguns and rifles. Dancing like ballerinas. Wishing they were anywhere but where they were.

Jake raised Little Richard and aimed carefully. The army-issue Colt.45 was a notoriously inaccurate weapon, especially when fired rapidly. It weighed a ton and kicked like a mule. What he was going to get, he knew, was one decent shot. The rest of the clip, which he fully intended to empty, was more likely to kill pigeons than cops.

Boom! Boom!

It took Jake a moment to realize that something was wrong. That there’d been two reports when he’d only pressed the trigger once. He looked at the gun, then out across the roofs. Thinking maybe one of the cops was shooting back. What he saw drove that second explosion right out of his mind. Two uniformed cops were dragging the limp body of a third cop. They were heading for the stairwell as fast as they could go, which is not to say they were moving as fast as their unburdened buddies. The rest of the cops were running.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

“What the fuck is goin’ on here?”

Then he knew what it was. They were coming through the front door.

Jake flew out of the bathroom. He began firing through the door as soon as he could see it and continued firing until the clip was empty. Then he leaped behind his makeshift barricade, expecting some kind of volley in return. But there was nothing. Just the echo of dying gunfire and the calm voice of the cop in the hallway.

“You back, Jake? I was gettin’ lonely out here with no one to talk to. That’s why I decided to knock on the door. You know, to get your attention.”

Jake peered over the back of the couch. The door was still in one piece. The lock had broken out-that’s most likely where the cops had aimed-but the bolt a foot above the knob was still intact and the bed slats hadn’t budged an inch.

“Jesus, that was close,” Jake muttered.

He replaced the empty clip, then walked over to the window and pushed one of the mattresses a few inches to the side. The roof directly across from the window was empty. A few cops were crouched behind the stairwell tower eighty feet away. He punched out the glass and aimed Little Richard in their general direction. They weren’t giving him much target, but if he waited long enough …

Boom! Boom!

“For Christ’s sake, stop doin’ that.” Jake fired through the door again. Just a single shot, this time. He didn’t want to run out of ammo before the cops made their charge.

“What do you think, Jake? You think I’m standing in front of this door? You’re doin’ a nice job on the wall out here, but you’re not doin’ shit to me.”

“Yeah? Well, sooner or later, somebody’s gotta come through that door. If your balls are as big as your mouth, maybe you’ll be leadin’ the parade.”

“If that’s the way you feel about it, why don’t you just unlock the damn thing and get it over with? This hammer’s gettin’ heavy.”

Jake took a quick look out the window. There were more cops out there, now, but they weren’t moving toward his building. They were hanging their heads while some big-shot officer chewed them out. He laid Little Richard on the windowsill and carefully sighted down the barrel.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Somewhere along the line, Jake knew, he must have pulled the trigger. Because he could see smoke curling from the business end of the.45. Only, the cops on the roof were still talking. Even as he watched, one of them leveled his rifle and fired a shot. The bullet thumped into the mattress above Jake’s head.

Jake turned back to the door. The deadbolt was definitely bent, now. Once it let go, the bed slats would have to take the heat. They wouldn’t last long.

“You still in there?”

“Yeah,” Jake shouted. “Me and my aunt. She’s sittin’ right in front of the door.”

“That’s funny, your mama told me your aunt was in the hospital. She told me the apartment was empty.”

“Mama’s got a big mouth. What else did she tell ya?” Jake wasn’t exactly in the mood for conversation, but on the other hand, he didn’t want the cop pounding on the door, either. Yeah, he was gonna die-that much was obvious-but there was no sense in rushing it.

“She told me your father was a gangster.”

“Bullshit, Mama never talks about him. Never.”

“Whatta ya think, I’m making this up? Your father was a gangster. They found him floating in the river. Which is exactly what the mob’ll do to you, if they ever get their hands on you. Of course, that’s not likely to happen, considering the only way you’re gonna get out of here alive is to surrender and you’re much too tough to do anything like that.”

“It’s too late. I nailed one of the cops on the roof. From what I could see, the scumbag wasn’t movin’.”

“Look, Jake, the thing is I told your mother if you gave yourself up, I’d protect you. She wants to see you alive. That’s why she told me where you were.”

“How many cops ya got out there? Fifty? A hundred? I never got much education, but I ain’t so stupid I think a hundred cops are here to keep me alive.”

Boom!

“Hey, whatta ya doin’? I’m talkin’, ain’t I?”

“What’d I tell you, Jake? Didn’t I say I promised your mother? Now you’re making me out a liar and I don’t like it. I gave my word and I don’t welsh. Why don’t you open the door? Why don’t you toss the gun and come on out?”

Jake shook his head slowly. He looked down at Little Richard. Thinking about how he should just put the gun in his mouth and get it over with.

“What’s ya name, cop?”

“Moodrow. Detective Stanley Moodrow.”

“Stanley? What kinda pansy name is Stanley?”

“You know how it is, Jake. You don’t get to pick your name. Just like you don’t get to pick your parents. Some things in life you gotta learn to overcome.”

“Like the electric chair? How do ya overcome the hot seat?”

“With a lawyer, Jake, like everybody else. We made almost four hundred arrests for murder last year. Four hundred arrests, but how many executions? Two? Three? I can hear the social worker testifying. Giving the judge an earful about how your father corrupted you and your mother’s crazy and you never caught a break in your life.”

Suddenly, Jake got an idea. An idea that might keep him alive for a few more hours.

“A few hours ain’t a long time,” he muttered. “Unless ya lookin’ at a few minutes.”

“I can’t hear you, Jake? If you’re talking to me, I can’t hear a word you’re sayin’.”

“Ya want me to surrender, Stanley?”

“I wouldn’t complain.”

“Then get me a lawyer. Before I come out. Get me a lawyer named Irving Blumstein. He’s got an office on Broadway, near the courthouse. Ya put him out in that hall, where he can see what’s happening, and I’ll give myself up.”

Silence. Dead silence. Which was about what Jake expected. Well, let them take their time. Let ’em take all the time in the world. He wasn’t going anywhere.

When the cops on the rooftop opened fire, it sounded, as Moodrow had predicted, like WWIII had broken out. They opened up with submachine guns, shotguns and rifles. Thirty of them, firing as rapidly as possible. They concentrated their fire on the covered living-room windows, blowing the mattresses out with the first volley. Filling the room with deadly, dancing lead.

Stanley Moodrow stood, unflinching, through the two-minute volley, his eyes fixed to those of Captain John McElroy. McElroy, for his part, returned Moodrow’s stare. The two of them might have been alone in the hallway. Despite the presence of twenty crouching patrolmen, all of whom had their eyes tightly closed.

The silence, when it came, was worse than the shooting. Dead silence was the phrase that popped into Moodrow’s mind.

“Detective,” McElroy finally said. “Take the door down.”

Moodrow lowered the four-pound hammer to the floor. He dropped it gently, avoiding any sound, then picked up a sixteen-pound, long-handled sledge and drove it into the door. The crash was obscenely loud, a clear violation of the collective silence. As if a flasher had wandered into a crowd of mourners gathered around an open grave.

It wasn’t until the door gave way, suddenly flying open to smash against the inner wall, that Moodrow considered the possibility that Jake Leibowitz was alive and waiting. He dropped the sledgehammer, drew his weapon, then glanced up at McElroy.

“You got anything special in mind?” he asked.

McElroy didn’t bother to respond. He stepped into the doorway, leaving Moodrow no choice except to follow.

They found Jake Leibowitz’s body in a pool of blood and glass. He was lying face-down, the dozen wounds on his back clearly entrance wounds. The shotguns had done their job on the barricaded windows, but it was the rifles and the Thompsons that’d killed Jake Leibowitz. The single shotgun wound on his body hadn’t been fatal, although it must have been extremely painful. The pellets had ripped into the back of his head, tearing through his scalp and flipping it over his face.

Captain John McElroy stared down at Jake Leibowitz’s bloody skull for a moment, a thin smile pulling at his lips, then turned to face the young detective standing next to him.

“Looks like they started the autopsy without us,” he said.