Stephen Solomita - A Piece of the Action

Kate stood up abruptly. “I guess I could say the same thing about myself. Everything I value just happened. Everything the nuns told me; everything my father told me. I bought the whole package, all nine yards. Of course, I wanted you to get ahead. I wanted you to come out to Bayside, to leave the slums and … It was a joke and the joke was on me. I really believed that an ordinary detective could afford to live in Bayside. Why shouldn’t my father have a big house and a new car every two years? Why shouldn’t we put down new carpeting before the old carpeting wore out? You want a piano? Go out and buy it. A mahogany bedroom set? A finished basement? A vacation in Havana?”

“I get the point, Kate, but the question is what do you want to do about it?”

She answered by walking toward the bedroom. “What I want to do is change. Hell, Stanley, I already have changed. When I think about that jerk, Father Ryan, and his sadistic penance, and that I actually went through with it, I want to throw up. I’m twenty-two years old and I’m tired of being a little girl.”

It was late and, as in most New York tenements, the landlord wasn’t sending up much heat. They huddled together beneath the blankets and Moodrow, determined to go slowly, let his finger drift over Kate’s breasts, let them trail along the smooth, flat plane of her belly, let them caress the outside of her leg down to the knee, then crawl along the ribbon-smooth flesh of her inner thigh.

“Jesus, Kate,” he whispered. “I never dreamed this would happen again.”

Instead of answering, Kate swung up to straddle his hips. She leaned forward, the expression on her face at once determined and fierce. Holding him in her hand for a moment before sliding down to envelop him.

Moodrow’s decision to go slowly was lost in a moment, as was the entire decision-making process. Thinking about it later, he decided that what they’d done was fuck. That the act was purely physical, despite the fact that afterwards, his breath coming in long deep heaves, he could literally feel the bond between them as it tightened. Their union, he realized, had been more elemental than love. It might even be stronger, though he couldn’t be sure of that. Time would tell.

They hadn’t slept very much when Moodrow glanced over at the clock, noted that it was 6:10, and rolled out of bed. He looked down at Kate for a moment, then gently shook her.

“Kate, Kate.”

“Not again, Stanley,” she muttered. “I’m too old.”

Moodrow flipped on a bedside lamp and shook her more roughly. “It’s six o’clock, Kate, and I have to get ready to leave. What are you gonna do about work? You want me to set the alarm?”

Kate sat up and Moodrow found his eyes drawn to her breasts the way a shopkeeper’s eyes are drawn to the barrel of a shotgun. At that moment, her beauty was almost frightening. To lose her and gain her and then lose her again …

“I’ll have coffee with you before you go,” Kate said. “Just let me use the bathroom.”

“As soon as I finish.”

“Why should you go first?” Kate was smiling as she said it.

“Because I’m closer.”

Fifteen minutes later, Moodrow poured out two cups of steaming coffee, setting one in front of Kate and sipping at the other.

“We haven’t talked about what you want to do,” he said.

“I want to stay here,” Kate answered quickly. “If you’ll have me.”

“Well, I don’t know, Kate. It seems to me like I already had you.”

“You never change, Stanley.” Kate shook her head. “Thank God.”

“Actually, we’ve both changed. No matter what happens, neither of us can go back to your father. Not anymore. But that doesn’t put Jake Leibowitz behind bars, does it? I’ve gotta get going. You know how it is, right?”

“I’m a cop’s daughter, remember?”

Moodrow nodded solemnly. “All things considered, I don’t think I’m likely to forget. What time do you have to be at work?”

“I’m going to call in sick today. I may call in sick permanently.”

“Are you serious?”

Kate looked down at the table, her expression almost shy. “It’s too far away. I thought I might find something on the Lower East Side.”

“You sure you can live down here?”

“I don’t know if ‘sure’ is the right word for it, but I was talking to Greta last night and she offered to show me around the neighborhood. Let me ask you something, Stanley. Does Greta tell the truth? Some of her stories are pretty unbelievable.”

Moodrow walked around to Kate’s side of the table. “Well, I’ve never caught her in a lie.” He leaned over and kissed her on the lips, letting his hands slide down to cover her breasts, then abruptly stood up.

“Wait a minute, I just had an idea. I just had a great idea. Do me a favor, Kate. You tell Greta that I want to see her when I get back this afternoon. Tell her there’s something I need to talk to her about.”

“Stanley,” Kate said, grabbing onto both of his hands, “she’s harmless. She’s an old lady.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“I thought you were angry because she’s interfering in our lives.”

Moodrow giggled, then covered his mouth with his hand. “Even if I was sore about that, I wouldn’t waste my time trying to change her. Not Greta Bloom. I’d get better results waving a fan at a blizzard. No, I think I just came up with a way Greta can help me get to Jake Leibowitz. But don’t tell her that. Just ask her if she can take a few minutes out of her busy schedule to talk to me. I wanna figure out exactly what I’m gonna say before she hears about it. Capish?”

“Is that Yiddish?”

“No, it’s Italian. But it’s good to see you’re tryin’.”

January 23

If you absolutely have to stand around outside, Moodrow thought as he took up a position on the north side of Houston Street near the East River, you couldn’t pick a better day, not in the winter in New York.

It was seven o’clock in the morning and the temperature was already in the forties. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky above the tenements to the west or the river to the east. The edge of a solid-gold sun was just visible over the factories and warehouses lining the Queens side of the river. Its sharply angled light sparkled on the red-brick facade of the nearly completed Baruch Houses across Houston Street. The Baruch Houses, when finished, were expected to provide a little over two thousand heavily subsidized apartments to as many worthy families. There was a fly in the proverbial ointment, however. According to the Daily News, the waiting list already held ten thousand names.

Moodrow was standing in front of another project, the Lillian Wald Houses, one of the known dealing addresses of Santo Silesi. It seemed as good a place to do random canvassing as anywhere else. He didn’t expect much to come of his efforts, but that didn’t mean he could allow himself to duck them. He held his badge in one hand and his quarry’s photo in the other, approaching residents as they came out of the doorway.

“Can I talk to you a minute? You know this guy?”

Most hurried past with a quick glance and a quicker shake of the head. A few stopped for a closer look. Fewer still were known to Moodrow, some from school and some from his days in the gym. They were friendlier, more willing to consider the problem, but one and all, they professed ignorance.

Whenever possible, Moodrow filed away the names and faces of those who tried to help. He’d always had a prodigious memory. That was why he’d done so well at St. Stephen’s where a premium was placed on the rote learning and eventual regurgitation of simple, unconnected facts. Moodrow fully intended to put that asset to work for him. Every detective in the NYPD had informants, but very few could count on ordinary citizens for a steady flow of information. Having grown up in the neighborhood, Moodrow knew from experience that Joe Citizen often lived cheek by jowl with some of the most vicious maggots on the Lower East Side. That, for instance, keeping your kids away from the bad apples usually made the difference between college and prison for the younger generation. If he could tap into their knowledge, gain their trust …