Stephen Solomita - A Piece of the Action

It was almost nine o’clock when a tall Spanish kid, his nose heavily bandaged, strolled through the project doorway. He wore the tightly pegged pants and the satin baseball jacket typical of teenage gang members. Moodrow approached him with caution.

“Excuse me, son.” He flipped his shield in the kid’s face. “You know this guy?”

The kid glanced at Moodrow’s badge, then at Jake Leibowitz’s photograph. He started to push by, muttering some proof of his impending manhood, then stopped in his tracks.

“You know this guy?” Moodrow repeated.

He looked up at Moodrow for a moment. “ Si, I have seen this blanco. Selling decata. Say to me, Senor Policia, do you look for him to go to jail?”

“More like the electric chair.”

“You goin’ to catch him, Senor Policia ?” The kid’s voice dripped sarcasm.

Moodrow stepped forward, allowing his face to lose all expression. “Dig the wax out of your ears, punk, because I’m only gonna say this once. I may be asking for your help, but that don’t mean I’m gonna take your shit. You keep running that smart mouth, you’re not gonna have to worry about whether you did your homework. My name is Detective Moodrow. I own the Lower East Side. Comprende ?”

“I am no your stool pigeon, Detective Moodrow. No matter wha’ you own.”

“Take it easy. Whatta ya think, I picked you out special? I’ve been standing here for two hours and I’ve been talkin’ to everybody. Look, this guy has killed four people. I want him off the streets. What I think is that maybe you want him off the streets, too. If you know where he’s holed up and you tell me, I won’t forget it. I won’t forget it and I won’t ask why you told me.”

The kid took his time, mulling it over for a few minutes before responding. “Thees maricon, someone seen him on Henry Street.”

Henry Street was a half-mile and several hundred thousand people away from where Moodrow was standing.

“You looking for him, kid? You lookin’ for Mister Leibowitz?” Moodrow already knew the answer. He could feel it. Poor old Jake. The cops, the mob, the Tenth Street Dragons-was there anyone who didn’t want to kill him?

“Do me a big favor,” Moodrow continued. “If you find him first, leave his carcass in the street. You’ll be making life a lot easier for both of us.”

In his own way, Jake Leibowitz was also enjoying the January thaw. He was lying in a short alleyway between two tenements on Thompson Street in Greenwich Village. Lying next to half a dozen garbage cans, dressed in rags, sucking on a wine bottle filled with grape juice. He’d been lying there all night.

It wasn’t the way he wanted it, but Jake figured it was necessary. By this time Joe Faci must be staring over both shoulders and between his legs whenever he was on the street.

“The sap’s head must look like a fuckin’ pendulum,” Jake said out loud.

It was eight o’clock in the morning and the sidewalks were crowded. Several people looked over at the sound of his voice, but then quickly turned away, that special disgust reserved for terminal drunks evident on their faces. Jake raised the bottle to his lips and kissed the side of the closest garbage can.

“Fuck ’em,” he muttered. Ordinary citizens had never been more than prey to him and now that his own goose was cooked, they weren’t even that. They meant nothing; they were irrelevant. Like telephone poles or fire hydrants. Pure scenery.

What next? Jake asked himself. What next after I do the deed on Joe Faci?

Santo Silesi was his best guess. He hadn’t spoken to his mother in the last couple of days and knew nothing of Silesi’s execution or the intense police scrutiny that had followed it. What he figured was that he’d take care of Joe Faci, then go after Santo. That’d wipe the slate clean. Once young Santo was resting on a slab in the morgue, he’d be free to run. Assuming that was what he wanted to do. He didn’t know and he couldn’t worry about it. Why should he?

His chances of getting past Silesi, who lived somewhere in Brooklyn, were slim to none.

The door to 1473 Thompson, directly across the street, opened suddenly and Jake slipped behind the cans. It was Joe Faci, accompanied by his wife and wearing his Sunday best. Joe was carrying two suitcases and his lumpy old lady was dragging a third bag along the ground. They hesitated for a fraction of a second, looking up and down the block, then made their way across the street to Faci’s Cadillac.

Jake rose, his back to Faci, deliberately knocking over a half-filled garbage can. He shuffled down the alley, fell hard on the pavement, then slowly dragged himself to his feet again. Pulling his battered filthy hat over his face, he turned and stumbled forward.

Jake’s plan was to touch Faci, to get Faci’s attention by rubbing his greasy fingers on the sleeve of Faci’s lambswool overcoat. He wanted to see Joe Faci’s look of disgust slowly dissolve into pure terror.

He got his wish, though he didn’t have to make contact with Faci. Faci’s wife wrinkled her nose in disgust and pointed over her husband’s shoulder at the advancing menace.

“Watch for the bum,” she said.

Faci turned quickly, his features set into the hardest look in his repertoire. The glare didn’t phase Jake. Not one bit. His eyes never left Joe Faci’s hands, hands that remained empty too long.

“Hi, Joe, how’s it hangin’?” Jake raised his eyes to meet Faci’s. Abe Weinberg’s.45, its barrel riveted on Faci’s gut, nestled comfortably in his hand. Little Richard.

Joe Faci’s expression jumped from disgust to fear to a half-assed smile in the space of an eyeblink.

“Hey, Jake, how ya doin’? Long time no see.”

“If your old lady don’t shut her mouth, you ain’t gonna see another five seconds,” Jake answered. He jerked his chin toward Faci’s wife. Already whimpering, she looked like she was working herself up to a full-fledged scream.

“ Statti citta ,” Joe Faci snapped. It came out ‘stata geet,’ a far cry from anything ever heard in Rome, but enough to shut his wife’s mouth.

“I killed Steppy,” Jake announced. He was starting to get excited, starting to work himself up toward a rush of pure pleasure that seemed to get more and more familiar as time went on. Now that he knew it was coming, like orgasm at the end of sex, he wanted to take his time, to enjoy the preliminaries as much as the inevitable result. Jake slid the gun back under his overcoat without taking the business end off Joe Faci’s navel.

“Ya know what ya problem is?” Joe Faci asked calmly. “Ya problem is that ya crazy.”

“Jeez,” Jake returned, “a regular Siggy Freud. He was a Jew, too, ya know. Freud, I mean.”

“All we asked ya to do is take a vacation and you turn it into this. What’s the point, Jake? What does it get ya?”

“The point is that I done twelve years in the joint and I somehow got tired of people tellin’ me what to do. When to get up. When to eat breakfast. When to go to work. When to go to sleep. When to take a fuckin’ vacation.”

“Okay, Jake, I get the picture. But how could I know ya felt like that? Look at me. Am I a gypsy fortune teller? Me and Steppy, we thought it was for your own good. If ya remember, the heat was on you, Jake. It was you the cops was tryin’ to put in the electric chair.”

“They’re still tryin’, as far as I know.” Jake wanted to see that quick flash of fear return to Joe Faci’s face, but Faci’s voice remained calm.

“Ya know, it ain’t too late to blow town. You could still get out. Maybe they ain’t got a good case. Maybe if ya weren’t goin’ around knockin’ guys off, the cops’d forget about ya.”