Stephen Solomita - A Piece of the Action

“Three grand,” Joe Faci had said, “like I promised. And this here is the name and the phone number of the dispatcher at SpeediFreight who’s been working with us. Call him and arrange a face to face. You should be aware that he sometimes needs a little encouragement.”

Izzy’s cut had been 30 % of twenty-two fifty. Silesi had settled for 20 %. Which had left Jake with a very satisfying eighteen seventy-five.

“As in one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five dollars and no fucking cents,” Jake said, straightening his tie.

The first thing Jake had done was stop off in Mrs. Pearlstein’s Ladies’ Garments on Norfolk Street and pick up the largest rabbits’ fur coat on the rack. Not that he was stupid enough to actually tell his mother it was rabbits’ fur when he handed it over.

“It’s raccoon, mama,” he’d said. Then he’d broken into a sweat when she tried it on. If the goddamned thing hadn’t buttoned over her fat gut, if she’d had to have her raccoon coat altered, if the equally fat woman who ran Mrs. Pearlstein’s had laughed in Mama’s face … But it hadn’t happened. The coat had fit loosely enough and neither his mama nor her old-country girlfriends could tell the difference between mink and cat.

Jake hadn’t forgotten about his own reward, either. He’d gone uptown, to Leighton’s on Broadway, and bought himself a pearl-gray, double-breasted overcoat and a matching homburg. The homburg, with its softly rolled brim, made him look older, more mature. It made him look established. Which was the whole point, really.

“Ya beggin’ days’re over, Jakie-boy,” he said as he dressed. “Time ta show the world where ya comin’ from.”

Fifteen minutes later, he was down on Pitt Street, stepping out of the Packard and walking up to a familiar door. He knocked softly and waited until it opened, until he was face to face with Al O’Neill.

“What could I do for ya, mister?” O’Neill asked.

“Ya don’t remember me?” Jake took off his hat and leaned forward. “I’m insulted.”

“Hey, mister, I see a lotta guys …” Then it hit him and he staggered back. “We’re payin’,” he said. “We’re payin’ everything. We’re payin’ on time.”

“Relax, Al, I ain’t here on business. I’m here on pleasure.”

“Yeah?” O’Neill took another step back, then his face brightened. “Yeah?”

“Everybody gotta get laid, right? If it wasn’t fa that, where would you be?”

O’Neill managed a laugh. “Can’t argue about that one. Now, whatta ya intrested in? Ya got anything special in mind?”

“Young and willin’, Al. That’s all that matters.”

January 9

Stanley Moodrow, sitting at his kitchen table, a cup of coffee in one hand and the Daily News in the other, was more than annoyed. It wasn’t the events of the last few days that had him going. He’d become reconciled to making the rounds with Salvatore Patero. Not that he actually approved (or even that he was committed to the money), but there was nothing he could do about it. Not in the short term, at least. The cards had been dealt and now he had to play them. It was like the sky falling on Chicken Little. The smart thing was examine the pieces, then do what you had to do.

He’d learned that lesson the hard way. He’d been fifteen when his father died quickly, twenty-three when his mother died slowly. Whatever he’d meant to say to his father or been afraid to say to his mother was going to go forever unsaid. For a few minutes, at his mother’s wake, he’d thought he might die himself. Just stop where he was.

“If you can get through this, you can get through anything.” That’s what he told himself. And the truth was that compared to sitting on that folding chair by the coffin while friends and relatives murmured their condolences, his problems with Sal Patero and Pat Cohan were less than two piles of dogshit on the sidewalk. No, what bothered Stanley Moodrow as he dawdled over his breakfast was the weather.

It was cold and windy. Again. Looking out of his bedroom window as he’d dressed, Moodrow had followed the hunched backs of workingmen as they made their way to buses and subways. Checking the weather was a habit he’d picked up as a patrolman. It was funny, in a way. The newspapers wrote about cops all the time. Likewise the novelists. And while the reporters were mostly critical and the novelists full of bull, neither of them seemed to understand the physical aspects of the job.

On cold days, if you managed to keep moving, you’d stay warm from your neck to your ankles. Above and below, you froze no matter what you did. Your ears and feet would hurt for the first hour, then go numb and stay that way until you finished your tour. Which wasn’t so bad until you came back to the station house and thawed out. On really cold days, the pins and needles would have more than one cop dancing in front of his locker.

The summer wasn’t much better-you sweated all day and tended your rashes at night. By the time the dog days hit, your feet and armpits were permanently inflamed, the powder you put on in the morning was white greasy mud by noon, your balls were floating in a lake of sweat by ten o’clock. What got you through the discomfort was nothing more than dogged persistence. You learned to accept the discomfort like an ox accepting the yoke.

The telephone interrupted Moodrow’s daydreams and he left the kitchen to pick it up. He was expecting to hear Sal Patero’s voice, but found his fiancee on the line instead.

“Stanley,” she said, almost whispering, “I only have a minute, but I have to talk to you.”

“Are you at home?”

“No, I’m at Sacred Heart. I just went to confession.”

“And?” The next part wasn’t going to be any better than the weather and Moodrow knew it.

“What we did the other day, Stanley? It was beautiful, even if it was technically a sin.”

“Did you tell that to Father Grogan?”

“It was Father Ryan. And no, I didn’t. I told him that I knew I’d hurt Jesus and I was sorry for that. Which I am, Stanley. But the important thing is I had to promise not to do it again. You know that I had to.”

Moodrow did know it. In order to make a true confession, in order to receive forgiveness, you had to do two things. You had to be truly repentant and you had to believe that you wouldn’t go out and sin again. Moodrow had been all of fourteen when he’d realized that he was going to do certain things over and over again. No matter how many oaths he took in the confessional. He’d handled this insight by avoiding confession. Compounding the felony was what the lawyers called it.

“All right,” he muttered. “I admit it. But you’re also expected to avoid ‘the near occasions of sin.’ Does that mean we can’t see each other until the wedding?”

“You don’t have to be cruel, Stanley. You’re a Catholic, too.”

“I’m a phony Catholic, like ninety-nine percent of all the Catholics in the world.” He hesitated a moment. “Look, I’m sorry, Kate. I don’t want to attack your faith. The other day … well, if I gotta wait another six months, I’ll wait. That’s all there is to it.”

“Actually, there’s something else, Stanley. I probably shouldn’t have gone to Father Ryan. I should have gone to Father Grogan, because he’s a lot easier. Maybe I felt guilty. I don’t know, but it’s done now. Father Ryan wants me to tell my father. As part of the penance.”

“ Jesus Christ. ”

“Don’t take the Lord’s name, Stanley.”

As he made his way to the 7th Precinct, Moodrow was hoping against hope. He knew he was dealing with a fifty-fifty proposition at best. Maybe Kathleen wasn’t a religious fanatic, but she did believe in sin and the ritual of forgiveness. Which always included a penance. Most penances consisted of saying a rosary or lighting a candle, but apparently Father Ryan had considered Kate’s sin to be especially evil.