Stephen Solomita - A Piece of the Action

“Get to the point,” Moodrow said. “What do you want from me?”

“Nothing. Right now. But maybe, somewhere in the future, I’ll ask for a favor. Nothing big, Stanley. I ain’t gonna ask ya to fix the grand jury. Sometimes I get a phone number and I need an address. For you, it’s nothin’. For me, it’s a royal pain in the ass. Plus …”

“So you can find the deadbeats, right?” Moodrow interrupted. “That’s why you’d want an address.”

“Yeah. Like that.”

“And then you can send Carmine with a baseball bat to make the collections.”

“Hey, Stanley …”

“Forget it, Dominick. Wipe that crap out of your mind. It ain’t gonna happen.” Moodrow pulled his head back, freeing his hands. “I’m gonna tell you what I told your partner. If you brought me here to jerk my chain, I’m gonna make your life miserable for the rest of my career. You’re gonna be my personal project. Days off? Vacations? Some guys take up fishing to pass the lonely hours. I’m gonna take up Dominick Favara.”

“You expect me to give it up for nothin’? I tell ya, Stanley, I’m startin’ to lose my temper.”

“Go ahead, Dominick. Go ahead and lose it. See what happens.” Moodrow leaned back and smiled. “The way I see it, Dominick, is that you and Carmine are a couple of ambitious punks. You’re both trying to move up in the world and if you can do it by putting me onto Steppy Accacio, so much the better. Look at it this way, Dominick, you tell me who killed Luis Melenguez, you’re payin’ yourself.”

“If you got all the answers, whatta ya doin’ here?”

“I’m waiting for you to cut the bullshit and say what you have to say.”

Favara looked over at his partner for a moment, then turned back to Moodrow. “That part of the Lower East Side, Pitt Street and along the river, is being run by Steppy Accacio, who you already know about. Nobody operates east of Avenue B without payin’ Steppy off. The pimp got behind on his payments. He was makin’ noises like he didn’t see why he should have to pay at all. Accacio can’t ignore this. He’s gotta do somethin’, because if he don’t, nobody’s gonna pay. You gettin’ the picture?”

“Keep goin’, Dominick. And don’t forget the punch line.”

Favara grinned. “I won’t forget, Stanley, but I gotta save it for the end. Like any good comedian. Now, what Steppy does is hire three outside guys, three Jews, to break the pimp’s face. It’s supposed to be a lesson for everyone, a real simple deal. Only this little spic walks into the middle of it and one of the Jews plugs him. The shooter, by the way, ain’t been seen since right after it happened. The word on the street is that he was punished by his partners for makin’ everybody’s life miserable.

“That was supposed to be all she wrote. It was supposed to be the whole story. Only last night, one of the Jews comes to me and says he ain’t happy with Steppy. He’s lookin’ to be on his own. Then, today, I hear from a guy who’s very close to Steppy, a mug who also wants out. He tells me the Jew’s partner got into a car with the wrong people. Now he’s sleepin’ in the trunk. Steppy’s runnin’ scared, Stanley, because the cops are puttin’ the heat on him. Which is very interestin’, seein’ as it was the cops who were supposed to fix it.”

“What about O’Neill and his wife? You know about them?”

“They seen what happened, Stanley. They had to go.”

“Who killed them?”

“The Jews. The ones who killed the spic. At least, that’s what I heard. I don’t want ya to think I was there.”

“Anything else?”

“Just the punch line, Stanley. One little, two little, three little Jewboys, right? Number one, the shooter, was named Abe Weinberg. Number two, who’s sleepin’ in a trunk, was named Izzy Stein. Number three, who’s still walkin’ around, is named Jake Leibowitz. If ya wanna play Dick Tracy and solve this crime, ya better move fast, Stanley, ’cause Mister Leibowitz ain’t gonna be around much longer. Steppy’s cuttin’ his losses.”

It was raining hard by the time Carmine Stettecase dropped Moodrow off by his car on the Lower East Side. The battered Ford looked like a poor relation next to Carmine’s blue Cadillac, and Carmine didn’t waste any time making the obvious comparison.

“That ya car, Stanley?” he asked. “That what ya drivin’? Christ, you’d be smarter takin’ the subway.”

Moodrow turned up the collar of his trenchcoat and tugged on the brim of his hat. “Maybe you should stick around, Carmine. In case I need a push. My Ford doesn’t like to start in the rain.”

“That’s a joke, right? Me pushin’ that piece of shit with my Fleetwood?” Carmine shut down the windshield wipers and a curtain of rain swept across the glass. “Lemme ask ya somethin’, Stanley. And don’t get all hot, ’cause I ain’t bustin’ balls. I really wanna know. I wanna know how ya could live like this when ya could do so much better? Why do ya give a shit about Jake Leibowitz? Or that spic, Melenguez? Dominick and me, we’re goin’ up in the world. We ain’t stupid, like that mountain guinea, Accacio. We ain’t gonna leave bodies on the street. You could play along with us or not play along with us. Nothin’s gonna change. No matter what ya do, the neighborhood’s gonna stay the same sewer it always was.”

Moodrow opened the door without replying. He stepped out into the rain, Carmine’s voice following him all the way. “Ya wanna be a hero, Stanley? That what it is? Protectin’ the weak and the poor? You’re a dope, Stanley. You was always a dope.”

But Moodrow was past replying. His mind, having already shifted gears, was busy sifting information, casting about for a course of action. Moodrow had been surprised to hear that Leibowitz was a neighborhood kid, but then Favara had filled in the details and it had all made sense. Leibowitz had spent twelve years in a federal prison. He’d left the Lower East Side just about the time Moodrow had become aware of the streets and the animals who inhabited them. Jake was back, now. And Stanley Moodrow was all grown up. Stanley Moodrow had become the cop who was going to put Jake Leibowitz in the electric chair.

The Ford refused to start. As predicted. The engine turned over, but except for an occasional backfire through the carburetor, never came close to actually starting. Which meant his basic strategy, to cruise the Lower East Side until he found Allen Epstein, was out the window.

What he had to do was get into the precinct. He needed Jake Leibowitz’s photograph and fingerprints. There was a witness up in Hell’s Kitchen, a witness whose identification could be used to produce arrest and search warrants. Once the process got started, once a judge put his name to the paperwork, Pat Cohan would have to back off and let the system operate. Maybe after Jake Leibowitz figured it out, he’d trade Steppy Accacio for a life sentence. Maybe Accacio, just as guilty of murder as Jake Leibowitz in the eyes of the law, would turn on Patrick Cohan and Sal Patero.

And maybe if he, Moodrow, didn’t find Allen Epstein and gain access to the information he needed, Jake Leibowitz, Steppy Accacio, Pat Cohan and Sal Patero would have the pleasure of toasting Stanley Moodrow’s mug shot.

Moodrow got out of the car and began to walk south, toward Delancey Street and the Williamsburg Bridge. There was an alley beneath the bridge, just off Willet Street. It ran between two small businesses: MYRON KOSHER: LIVE POULTRY PICK YOUR OWN and B amp;B PLUMBING: SECOND-HAND AND NEW. Officer Joseph Gerber would be sleeping inside that alleyway. He’d be sitting on the passenger’s side of his squad car, his head slumped against the window, a pint of PM whiskey tucked under the seat. The booze wasn’t there to get him stoned. It was there to keep him functioning through roll call.