Stephen Solomita - A Piece of the Action

Moodrow was honest enough to admit that he’d known about the game all along. His uncle had enlightened him before he’d entered the Academy. It was simple enough, really. The courts (the lower courts, at least) would admit any confession, no matter how it was obtained. The higher courts, assuming the convict had the money for an appeal, were as likely to reverse these convictions as not, but this meant less than nothing to the NYPD. As far as the cops were concerned, cases were cleared the minute a conviction was obtained, no matter what happened two years down the line. Of course, clearing cases wasn’t the o nly way up for an ambitious precinct commander, but failing to clear as many cases as your competitors was a sure way down.

Maybe, Moodrow thought, it was like your first murder scene. You never forgot the first one-it dug under your skin like the teeth of a bloodsucking tick-but, after a while, you simply got used to the violence. After a while, you could stand there, inhaling the coppery stink of drying blood, and chomp on your doughnut like a real veteran.

The doorbell rang before Moodrow could drag himself back to the Daily News. He got up, hoping against hope that it was Kathleen come to tell him that Father Ryan could go to hell. But it wasn’t Kathleen. It was his neighbor, Greta Bloom.

“Good evening, Stanley,” she announced, marching past him into the apartment.

“Why don’t you come in, Greta?”

“I’m already in, thank you.” She turned back to the door. “Rosaura, please. Don’t stay in the hallway. You’ll get a draft.”

The middle-aged woman who stepped into the apartment was so large that Moodrow couldn’t believe that he hadn’t noticed her in the hallway, had nearly shut the door in her face.

“Stanley,” Greta said, “this is your neighbor, Rosaura Pastoral. Rosaura, this is our policeman, Stanley Moodrow.”

Our policeman? Moodrow managed a nod despite his annoyance. He reminded himself that Greta had been his mother’s best friend, had nursed her through her illness. If it wasn’t for Greta Bloom, his mother would have spent the last six months of her life in a hospital.

“What could I do for you, Greta? Somebody lose a cat?”

“What you could do is ask us to sit down. And don’t be a wiseguy, Stanley. I told you a million times about that.”

“Greta, Mrs. Pastoral, please sit down.”

Then he remembered. A homicide on Pitt Street. A stiff named … Melenguez, that was it. Luis Melenguez. He was supposed to ask around, find out what happened.

Greta perched herself on the edge of the couch. “ Nu, you shouldn’t bother with coffee and a nosh. It’s late and we won’t be staying long.”

“Gee, Greta, I was just about to create my world-famous onion dip.”

“Please, Stanley. This is serious business.”

Moodrow sat down and looked the two women over. Rosaura Pastoral looked to be about five foot eight. She weighed maybe a hundred and eighty pounds. Greta Bloom, tiny, nervous, fluttering like a parakeet, had never weighed more than a hundred pounds in her life.

“What it is,” Moodrow said, trying for a smile, “is I forgot all about it. I mean what you asked me the other day. Things got a little crazy in the precinct and I forgot to ask around.”

“He forgets a murder ? How is this possible?”

How could he explain it? All the times he’d responded to a crime scene to find a DOA lying in a pool of blood. It was always gruesome, no doubt about that, but it had long ago ceased to be exotic.

“What could I say? I’m sorry.” What he wanted to do was get rid of them without listening to the harangue already showing in the expression on Greta’s face. “I’ll tell you what, Greta. As long as you brought Mrs. Pastoral with you, why don’t you let her tell me why she feels something’s wrong here. That way I’ll know what to ask when I go into the precinct tomorrow.”

Greta Bloom sniffed once. “That’s smart, Stanley. But I’d be happy you shouldn’t embarrass me again. If you’re not interested in doing a favor, you should come right out and say so.”

Moodrow turned to Rosaura Pastoral without answering. Now that she was sitting in front of him, he did recognize her. Maybe he’d seen her by the mailboxes or carrying a bag of groceries up the stairs. He couldn’t really remember and that was too bad, because there was a time when he could name every family in the building.

“Maybe you better tell me about it,” he said.

“ Senor Moodrow,” Rosaura Pastoral spoke for the first time. Her voice was deep and slightly hoarse. “This thing happens the day after Christmas. My boarder, Luis Melenguez, goes out for the evening and he don’ come back. For five days I don’ hear nothing. Then someone tell me he is killed in a house on Peet Street.”

“Peet Street?”

“She means, Pitt Street,” Greta interpreted.

“I’m sorry for my English is no too good. I try to learn, but it comes very slow.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Moodrow said. “Just tell your story.”

“When I’m hearing this about Luis, I go to the police station and talk to the officer at the desk. He is sending me to a man in a suit, Detective Maguire. Detective Maguire is telling me the investigation is … progressing. Tha’ is the word he use. Progressing. Then I ask him why nobody come to see me. I am Luis’s landlady. He live in my home. Why nobody come to as’ me who is his friends? Who is his enemies? Ayyy, Dios mio, Detective Maguire get so angry. He say I don’ know nothin’ about it, so why don’ I go home and mind my own business. I do like he say, but no is right thing. I don’ think so.”

Moodrow took a minute before he responded. He’d been in the final stages of training for his bout with Liam O’Grady on December 26 and knew less than nothing about the murder. But the fact that more than two weeks had gone by without an arrest meant that, statistically, at least, the murder was unlikely to be cleared.

“You say that nobody came to interview you. Nobody?”

“No, Senor. I never hear from nobody abou’ this thing. Luis Melenguez is only in this country six months. He leaves his wife and his children in Puerto Rico to come here. Luis never hurt nobody in his life. In his country, he is a … I don’ know the word for this.”

“A peasant, Stanley,” Greta said. “And believe me, from peasants I have experience.”

The Department, Moodrow knew, cleared a high percentage of homicides, usually within the first forty-eight hours. And the way they cleared them was by investigating the people closest to the victim. Of course, there might be any number of reasons why Maguire hadn’t followed standard operating procedure, not the least of which was the distinct possibility that Rosaura Pastoral was lying through her teeth. But even if Rosaura was telling the truth, even if Maguire had no good reason for sitting on his hands, there remained the question of what he, Stanley Moodrow, could do about it.

“You should understand something here,” he said, more to Greta Bloom than Rosaura Pastoral. “I’m not the commissioner. There’s not much I can do.”

“Stanley, please, no one expects you should go out and make miracles. But also you should remember that Rosaura is your neighbor. She comes to you for help, because there’s no other place for her to go. The machers at the police station don’t have no use for a pisher like Rosaura Pastoral. Let me tell you a story so you should understand what I’m trying to say.”

“Please,” Moodrow groaned. Greta’s stories had a way of extending themselves through several generations.