CAPTAIN ALLEN EPSTEIN, IN the waiting room of Deputy Inspector Seamus Flynn at One Police Plaza, felt like a cornered rat: Worse than a rat, for he could not even turn to make a final stand. There was no one to turn against.
He’d been taking the attitude that his men came first for so long, he couldn’t begin to accept what he was about to do. And worst of all, he didn’t know if he was doing it because he sincerely believed Moodrow to be wrong (which he did) or because he was a coward and wanted to cover his own ass. Naturally, Flynn kept him waiting, standard procedure for cops visiting One Police Plaza, but it was torture for Epstein. A small voice reminded him that it was not too late to leave—Flynn would be mad, but would accept some excuse about an emergency at the precinct. If he stayed, they would crucify Moodrow just as surely as that Arab they’d found the day before in the Bronx.
His agitation increased minute by minute until he desperately wanted to stand up and pace the floor. All the while, one question continued to rumble through his mind—would he be here if there was no chance the department could find out that he knew about Moodrow’s activities?
“All right, Captain, you can go in now.” A sergeant, young and very male, gestured toward the door. If Epstein had been one rank higher, he would have opened it for him.
“How are you, Allen,” Flynn said, as Epstein stepped into the room. He nodded toward a chair, waited just a second to show that he wasn’t entirely an ogre, then launched into his standard “dealing with subordinates” speech. “I’m unbelievably busy, Allen. Sorry,” he ran his fingers over his hair, patted it gently, “but this has got to be quick.”
Epstein tossed the pictures onto Flynn’s desk. “Moodrow’s handing these out. Canvassing. So far, only in Queens, but I don’t know his plans,”
Flynn stared at the sketches for a moment, before speaking. “The source?” he demanded.
“The only man who survived the Chadwick massacre.”
A look of ultimate disgust passed over Flynn’s face. Holding up the pictures he growled, “Do you mean to tell me that you don’t have any legitimate reason to associate these people with the American Red Army? I can’t believe you came to me with this crap. Tell me, Allen, did we ever question the possibility of apprehending the criminals who murdered Mr. Chadwick? But that, as we noted at the time, is a problem for a precinct leader, often called a captain, not a deputy inspector.”
Epstein returned Flynn’s gaze, advertising his determination. “I don’t think he’s reporting to Higgins. I think he’s completely on his own.”
“Did you call the bureau to ask if he was reporting?”
“For Christ’s sake, Inspector, you think I’d go outside the department without talking to you first?”
Flynn, his loyalty challenged, had only a single response open to him. “Of course, you’ve done the right thing, Captain.” He nodded enthusiastically. “One little question, though—has anyone at the FBI complained about Moodrow’s lack of diligence?”
“Not to me.”
“Then why do you want to make a big deal out of it?”
“Suppose the gang that murdered Chadwick is part of the American Red Army? If we put more people on it, we might…”
“Hold it, Captain. I’ve already passed a report on the Chadwick case to the mayor’s task force. If they’re interested, they’re keeping it to themselves. From where I sit, it’s the same with Agent Higgins and her people. If they really expected anything to come from Moodrow’s activities, they’d be screaming their heads off. Why not let sleeping dogs lie?”
Epstein, his anger tempered by the switch he was about to pull on his superior, leaned forward. “I assume that means you do not want me to go to Bradley with this information.”
To his credit, Seamus Flynn did not fail to hear the trap when it sprung. Now it would hang on his ass; he was taking responsibility for a crazy cop on a personal hunt. He sat back in his chair, considered the question for half a minute and realized there was only one move on the board.
“Let’s call Bradley and let him decide,” he said quickly. He wasn’t at all embarrassed to be taken for a coward. “Perhaps you can run these out to him and see what he wants to do.”
For George Bradley, FBI, Deputy Inspector Seamus Flynn’s morning phone call came as a pleasant interlude in what he hoped would be an extremely significant day. Hassan Fakhr had agreed to a meeting.
“You are a very smart man, Agent Bradley,” he’d said. “That’s why I’m giving you the American Red Army on a platter. Naturally, the price is slightly more than thirty pieces of silver, but we can chalk it up to nineteen hundred years of inflation.”
“Very witty. I just hope you’re smart enough not to ask for the treasury,” Bradley had answered.
“Try to see it from my point of view, George. Here I am shitting on everything I hold sacred, betraying every one of my living friends. And the nature of my treachery is so all-encompassing that it will force me to take up an entirely new identity. In effect I am to be reborn into any life I want.” Hassan’s voice was still full of good humor. “Now, I hope you have a portable telephone in the office.”
“I have one.”
“Get in your car and drive down Queens Boulevard. I’ll call you at 4 PM and give you an exact meeting place. Keep this in mind, George—it’s going to take at least a week to get the material, even if we can come to terms. If someone on your end betrays me, you might not get another chance at the Army for months. No one can tap a portable phone, so if you’re not personally bugged, I won’t be caught. Get it, George?”
Bradley had been beside himself with excitement, convinced at last that a nameless, wiseguy Arab was going to give him the American Red Army. Which explains why he suddenly found it important to assert control. “That’s absolutely right,” he said. “Your freedom depends entirely on me.”
So Flynn’s call was a welcome diversion, an interlude to cut the tension. Bradley had insisted on seeing Epstein immediately, much to Epstein’s chagrin. New York police captains were not accustomed to being summoned by federal agents. But he went, nonetheless, and without Hassan Fakhr’s ability to laugh at his predicament. The best he could hope for, now, was that Moodrow’s quest would prove fruitless, that his friend would look like a fool.
Bradley, on the other hand, found Epstein’s visit the answer to a knotty problem. Leonora Higgins had been away from her office for nearly a week. When the final report was written, what could he say about her contribution? No matter how innocuous the information, Flynn’s call and Epstein’s interview constituted ample justification for Higgins’ assignment to Stanley Moodrow.
Nevertheless, Bradley took Allen Epstein through his story in great detail, listening, as had Flynn, for anything new. Unlike Flynn, however, Bradley was not so quick to fault the captain. He studied the pictures very carefully, as if he could draw the American Red Army off the pages, then turned back to Epstein. “Tell me,” he said mildly, “how long have you been a cop?”
“Thirty-three years,” Epstein muttered. He found it extremely difficult to be in the same room with the FBI agent.
“Then why do you come to me with this crap?” He waved the pictures in Epstein’s face. “If this was all you had, you would not be sitting in that chair. You must have a legitimate reason for your suspicions and I think I should hear it. If you didn’t intend to share your information, why go to Flynn in the first place?”
Epstein cleared his throat. He’d been afraid of this question from the beginning. “I must have had two hundred detectives working under me since I became captain and I never had one better at finding the shortest route to an arrest than Moodrow. In all the time I’ve known him, he never once went on a wild goose chase.”
“Maybe he’s in so much pain, he’s lost his judgment. It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“And what if he’s got something he isn’t telling us?”
“If he’s holding back information that could lead us to these terrorists,” Bradley said, smiling, “I’ll bury him so deep he’ll think the sky fell on him.”
It was a dismissal, a flip, final word which Epstein refused to accept. “I can’t seem to convince anyone that I know how Moodrow thinks. Maybe it’s better that way. But if it was up to me, I’d put those faces on every television set in New York.” He stopped abruptly. Now that he had put it squarely, he felt more at ease. It wasn’t up to him anymore.
Bradley, by way of an answer, held up the likeness of Johnny Katanos so both could see it. “The only thing we know about this person is that he was a friend of a boy named Enrique Hentados. Everything else is speculation. Everything. If you put his face on television and even hint that he’s some kind of terrorist, and he turns out to be an ordinary citizen, his lawyer’s going to retire on ten percent of the settlement. The newspapers already call us a gang of witch hunters. What do you think they’d say if we set the whole city hunting some poor truck driver from Queens?”
By the time Allen Epstein made his obligatory visit to Moodrow’s apartment (a visit he’d known he would make even before the day began), it was nine o’clock and he was very drunk. On the way he cursed the stairwell, his own legs, the FBI, Seamus Flynn, and the entire 203rd Precinct so loudly that Moodrow was waiting, door open, before he reached the third-floor landing.
“Guess what, asshole,” Epstein shouted. “I just sold your butt to Flynn and the Feds.” He broke into ą malicious laugh. “And I don’t give two shits about it.”
Moodrow, who was also drinking that night, was well prepared for this turn of events. He’d been drinking to drown the effects of a ten-hour shift in a Bay Ridge pizza joint, ten hours of tossing dough and spreading sauce while a thoroughly amused Anthony Calella cracked jokes at his ineptitude.
“Come in, Captain,” he said formally.
“Thass right.” Epstein stumbled into the room and collapsed on the couch. “Sold ya mutha-fuckin’ ass to anyone willing to buy.” He paused a moment, then turned his eyes up to meet Moodrow’s. “But guess what again, Stanley? They ain’t buyin’. They don’t give a shit. Just another dopey cop.”
Moodrow digested the information passively. The truth of it was that he didn’t care a damn for what any of them did; for Stanley Moodrow there was no “afterwards.” His post-Army future was as uncertain as that of a blind man sleepwalking on the edge of a cliff. Whatever came would find him utterly unprepared.
Nevertheless, his captain needing cheering. He said evenly, “I understand what you did. Look at the bright side. They’re not going to do anything and you got your ass covered. What could be better?”
“Oh yeah,” Epstein demanded, pointing to the likenesses of Effie, Theresa, and John pinned to the wall. “I know these assholes are the Army. I know this, so don’t bullshit me. You’re playing a game with the whole goddamn city. And it ain’t the right thing.”
Moodrow shrugged his shoulders. “Nobody wants it, whether it’s true or not. So why get ya balls in an uproar? How ‘bout a drink?”
Epstein sank back into the chair. “Goddamn right.”
Moodrow went for another glass, filling it halfway with Caulfield’s Wild Turkey Bourbon before returning to the living room.
“What the fuck is this shit?” Epstein cried. He looked around wildly for a moment, then fell back. “You really drink this stuff?” he asked in a much quieter voice.
“Listen, Captain, you want I should call Alma and tell her you’re gonna stay over?”
Instead of answering, Epstein began to cry in that gross, slobbering way common to men who do not ordinarily get drunk. “I sold out my friend,” he moaned. “Sold him out to the cocksuckers. The pencil pushers.”
“I’ll call Alma.” Moodrow went to the bedroom phone and made the call to an unsurprised Alma Epstein.
“Take good care of him, Stanley,” she said before falling back to sleep.
“I will,” Moodrow said into a dead phone. He was accustomed to housing local cops too drunk to make their way back to surburbia and had no objection to Epstein’s presence. In a way, it eased his obsession with Rita’s killers. As the days passed, he was becoming more and more depressed. What if he failed? What if someone else captured them? Or if they were never captured? Only the fantasy, now summoned whenever he was alone, kept him from total immobility. As for Flynn and the FBI—his contempt for them was what had prevented him from discovering Leonora Higgins on that first day in Queens Village.
“Fuck them bastards, Stanley,” Epstein said as soon as the cop returned. “There’s only one way I can see to solve these crimes. And I’m gonna give it to you on a platter. I never told ya this, but my sister married a Greek. Believe that? A fucking Greek.” He grinned broadly. “Disgrace of both families. For years, nobody mentioned their names on either side. Then they had babies and you know how Jewish women get. Can you keep a grandmother from her grandchild? So everybody made up.
“That was twenty-five years ago. Now the bastard’s partners in a big diner on Metropolitan Avenue by 69th Street. That’s the last stop on the M line.”
“Yeah, I know.” It was to Moodrow’s credit that he did not automatically disregard the random piece of information Epstein, drunk and remorseful, handed him. Instead, he did the prudent thing, performing the act of a slow, thorough clerk in an information warehouse. He went to his notes, remembering how carefully he’d traced the route of the M Train through Ridgewood. For him, the geography of most of Queens had been laid out, like a street map, in small, brightly covered notebooks: Queens Boulevard; Grand Avenue; Metropolitan Avenue; the M Train. The list went on and on.
He’d ridden the M back and forth from Seneca Avenue to Metropolitan, interviewing every motorman he could find. He’d walked the streets at each stop, talking to shopowners. Nevertheless, by his own comments, he did not consider the area thoroughly canvassed. Too many uninterested people, too many stores where the owner wasn’t around. His entry under the Metropolitan Diner illustrated the problem. “Moron cunt at the cash register,” it read, “knows nothing.”
“What’s your brother-in-law’s name?” Moodrow asked.
“George Halulakis. If you can believe that.”
“What shift does he cover?”
“Days. Eight to eight.”
Dutifully, laboriously, Moodrow copied the information into his notebook.
Outside of Boston, the pizza business in New York has no parallel anywhere in the country. The telephone directory in Queens, for instance, lists 287 pizza parlors. For the most part they are narrow storefronts worked by a single Italian family. During the day they cater to street trade, especially school kids, selling pizza by the slice as well as Italian heroes and a few pasta dishes. At night, they sell whole pizzas, usually offering a delivery service to housewives too tired to cook. The quality is astonishingly good and visitors fortunate enough to become accustomed to this quality never return to Pizza Hut.
The hours, however, are long and monotonous. Thick loaves of dough are laboriously turned on the wrist until thin enough to spread on a large pie pan. Then sauce and cheese are added and the concoction baked in a special oven for about fifteen minutes. The good chefs work close to the front windows, tossing the spinning dough high in the air to attract the attention of passersby. Moodrow, on the other hand, could not seem to manage even the simplest maneuver and each attempt, much to the amusement of Tony Calella, resulted in strings of dough hanging from his hands to the floor.
“Hey, Salvatore,” Calella called. “Maybe youse oughta try Chinese.” Salvatore Calella, cousin from Baltimore, was the name and identity agreed upon by Moodrow and Calella. Curiously, although Moodrow was obviously neither Italian nor pizza chef, customers in the close-knit neighborhood of Bay Ridge took him for a fugitive, not a cop.
So Moodrow’s day went slowly, uncomfortably, though it was far less boring than sitting outside. Leonora Higgins, who was in fact sitting outside—sitting in a brown Plymouth Reliant with TRAFFIC stenciled across the front doors—would have agreed completely, for in addition to the boredom, she had another more pressing problem. As any cop will tell you, no ordinary human being can pass twelve hours without urinating. Male cops carry bottles just for this purpose. Females, however, are at a terrible disadvantage. By noon, Leonora was uncomfortable. By 2, she was in pain and having flashbacks to her first day trailing Moodrow. But she understood that Moodrow would not be on a stakeout without good reason, that someone must have made an identification from those pictures. For all she knew, the deal might come to a head at any moment. A good cop never left the scene of a stakeout, but good cops worked in pairs and she was alone.
Fortunately for Agent Higgins, the situation resolved itself late in the afternoon. Moodrow, assigned to tossing already cooked slices into the oven for reheating, was in a foul mood—his head ached so bad he was afraid to blow his nose. And Tony Calella, evening up for Moodrow’s discovery of his criminal past, stayed on his case, ridiculing him, much to the amusement of the patrons, at every opportunity.
By 4 PM, Moodrow had had enough. He tapped Anthony Calella on the shoulder and muttered, “We better go in the kitchen and have a fuckin’ talk.”
“Whatsa matter, Salvatore, youse ain’t happy in my employ?”
Moodrow, mad as he could get, nonetheless whispered his response so that no one could overhear. “Check this out, wop. Not only have I had enough of your big mouth, but I’m right now only one inch away from pullin’ your fucking head off your shoulders. Think I’m kidding?”
“No, no. Youse ain’t kiddin’, OK?” Calella, looking up into Moodrow’s eyes, caught a sudden glimpse of the insanity behind the cop’s calm exterior. The effect was chilling and might have had a permanent effect on their relationship. However, just at that moment, and most fortunately for Mr. Calella, a plump, dark, Puerto Rican girl who in no way resembled the wiry Theresa Aviles, walked through the door. “There she is, Sarge. I mean Salvatore. There’s the bitch.”
Moodrow, after one glance, removed his long white apron and handed it to Calella. His anger dropped off with the apron and was replaced by darkest gloom. It was only then he realized how much he’d been hoping, despite his instincts. He turned on his heel without another word and headed home.
Trailing several car lengths behind, a desperately squeezing Leonora Higgins, much to her credit, followed Moodrow’s Buick all the way to the Lower East Side before making a beeline to a coffee shop on 10th Street and Second Avenue. It was still early and she realized the stakeout had failed. Tomorrow, however, would be another day, a more active one, hopefully. At least Bradley had stopped bothering her, though she had no idea why.
In contrast, Moodrow was resisting the aftereffects of the failure as best he could. Stubbornly, in spite of a parade of Ritas floating through his consciousness, he pulled his mind back to his fantasy. He had captured two members of the American Red Army and was about to interrogate them. Slowly, deliberately fixing each image, he ran through the possibilities.
The dream got him into his apartment. Closing the door behind him, he was suddenly aware of the maps on the walls, the stacks of carefully labeled notebooks. He understood that he was buying time the way a falling man clutches at empty air on his way to Earth, but the alternative, to crash immediately, was too frightening. He went directly to the map and began to outline a campaign in central Queens, a campaign beginning on Woodhaven Boulevard at the Long Island Expressway and proceeding south through Ozone Park and Howard Beach to Far Rockaway. A campaign to fill tomorrow.