THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE project where Louise Greenwood lived with her daughter, Marlee, and the tenement that housed Rose Carillo was sharp and clear, even from out on the street. In an effort to avoid the expense of repointing the brick, the landlord had painted the building a dark, heavy red, a red the color of arterial blood. Now it was flaking so badly the five-story tenement looked like it had psoriasis. Shards of thick black paint projected from the wooden windowframes like razor blades. The frames themselves were obviously swollen and the lintels above them broken off. Several apartments on the second and third floors were empty, their windows covered with sheets of un-painted plywood. Scorch marks on the brick announced the occurrence of one of the most dreaded events in a New Yorker’s life—a burn-out.
As they walked quickly up the front steps, Jim Tilley threw his partner a disgusted look. The whole scene—the heat, the filth, the raw poverty, offended him. The lobby was no better than the exterior. The door lock was missing, the mailboxes wide open, the ammonia reek of urine so sharp it pinched his nostrils. On the way up the stairs, his foot crunched hard on some object. Instinctively, he jerked his leg away and glanced down, expecting to find an old chicken bone, perhaps a piece of broken glass. Instead, he found a two inch water bug, its body crushed, its antennae still frantically tasting the world.
The inevitable question, popping off in his head like grease spattering on a grill, was “how can people live like this?” Despite a year in the poverty of Fort Greene, he found himself asking it whenever he entered a slum like this one. First he would ask the question, then imagine himself at the head of an army of tenants, all armed with tools, restoring the building to a glory it never had…in spite of the fact that he knew the tenants had no money and the landlord, who dreamed only of the day he could tear the place down, build condos and retire to Bermuda, was as unlikely to supply the necessary capital as Jim Tilley was to go to heaven.
“Look, Jim.” Moodrow stopped him on the third floor landing. “Let me do the talking this time, all right? I know Rose Carillo and you won’t get anything out of her with threats.”
Unused to apologizing, Tilley replied in a whisper. “Listen, I feel sorry for the old lady, right? But how could I know from Marlee what her mother would be like?”
“What you need to do,” Moodrow turned to face him, “you need to relax until you get so you do know. Most of the folks in the 7th hate the scumbags as much as we do, but they don’t trust us worth a shit, either. And the reason they don’t trust us is most cops never learn to tell the citizens from the criminals. For most cops it’s all from the ‘darkie’ side of the force. If that’s as far as you can see into this world, you won’t never amount to anything as a cop. Not really.” He slowly scratched the thin strip of hair over his right ear, a habit he had when he needed time to think. “Ya know, one of the reasons I picked you out was your evaluations. They said you were ‘eager’ for action. I like that word. Eager. I didn’t wanna get stuck with a twenty-five-year-old hair-bag. I wanted you ta have balls, okay? But not basketballs. Like you don’t bounce ’em up and down on concrete. Ya gotta have balls with brains.
“Anyway, I want you to take a step back with Rose. She’s tough as nails and if she don’t want to tell us something, we’ll never get it by threatening her.” His expression was earnest, almost worried, as if he were responsible for his partner’s big mouth.
Looking into his small, black eyes, Tilley swallowed hard. “Don’t worry about it. I may be a slow learner, but I’m not retarded.”
“Sounds like you’re describing Levander Greenwood.”
“C’mon, man.”
Moodrow just laughed. “Don’t worry about it, Jimmy.” He waited for a response, but Tilley couldn’t think of anything to say. Then Moodrow put a hand on his partner’s shoulder, a hand that weighed about ten pounds. “One thing you need to understand, though. No matter what I say to Louise Greenwood or to Rose, my first aim is to get Levander Greenwood off the street. If there was no other way, I’d use your method. I wouldn’t hesitate.”
Tilley shrugged, then brought his attention back to Rose Carillo. He didn’t know what to expect from Greenwood’s ex-wife. The name sounded Italian, but she was from West Virginia somewhere and had been married to a black man. All the images contradicted themselves and left him utterly unprepared for the model-perfect white beauty who opened the door. She was small and quick, perhaps a little too bony in the shoulders, with a sharp nose and sharper chin, full lips and deep creases in her cheeks when she smiled. Her hair was raven-black and so glossy it shimmered as if freshly oiled. It fell over her shoulders, in front, to the tops of her breasts.
“Hello, Moodrow.” Her dark eyes flicked from Tilley to Moodrow to the landing and the stairs. Only then did she step back to let the two cops in. “Why don’t you go on down to the living room and get comfortable? I’ll be there in a second. You want something to drink?”
“What have you got?” Moodrow asked.
“I have scotch and Jim Beam and Coors. And I got vodka in the freezer I could mix with just a trace of cranberry extract. Get ripped and dissolve your kidneystones, all at the same time.”
“I’ll take the bourbon. Neat, okay?”
“How ’bout your friend?”
“Oh yeah, sorry. This is Jim Tilley. He’s my new partner.”
“Yeah? For real? You really have a partner?”
“Why not?”
She came back, looking bemused, and gave the young cop a closer inspection. “Well, good luck, Jim Tilley. What’ll you have to drink?”
“Do you have something without alcohol?” He could feel the heat of her body across the room, despite her neutral expression and a matter-of-fact voice with just the trace of a southern question mark at the end of each sentence.
“With two kids?” Her smile was natural, easy. “Orange juice. Milk. Those’re the big two. And cranberry-grape for when Lee’s feeling adventurous.”
He smiled, then found his lips were glued to it. “Orange juice. I’m feeling kind of tame at the moment.”
All at once, the front door slammed open and the sound of shouting filled the hallway, followed by running feet and two light-brown children, obviously brother and sister. When they saw the cops sitting in their living room, they skidded to a halt and their eyes grew big. They knew that men in suits usually meant serious trouble and they turned to look at their mother questioningly.
“You know Sergeant Moodrow, don’t you?” She waited a second for their memories to click in. “So, what do you say?”
“Hello, Sergeant Moodrow.” They looked to be about a year apart, the oldest, the boy, around seven. As they stared up at the two cops, suspicion (not awe or even curiosity) was evident in their gaze. No surprise in a neighborhood that sucks out innocence like a junkie sucks the sugar out of a candy bar.
“And this is Detective Tilley. He’s Sergeant Moodrow’s partner.” She nodded at Tilley. “The boy’s Lee and the girl’s Jeanette.”
“Hello, kids,” Tilley said lamely.
Nothing. A blank stare. Four large, dark eyes boring into his. At first it was funny, then annoying. Then he just wanted to backhand them into another room. Fortunately, Rose, returning with the drinks, bailed him out. “I want you kids to go upstairs and stay with Estelle for a while.”
“How long?” Jeanette demanded. “I’m hungry.”
“You just go do it, missy. I’ll be along when I’m through talking to these gentlemen. Estelle’s expecting you, but if you see anyone else, you’re not to mention that policemen came to this house.”
They turned and left without speaking. As Jim Tilley watched their backs retreat down the hallway, he suddenly guessed the reason for their hostility. The two cops were the bringers of bad tidings. No good would come from their visit.
“Moodrow, can I speak in front of your friend? No offense, Detective Tilley.”
“You can speak about anything, but our secret sex life,” Moodrow returned cheerfully.
“I’m serious, Moodrow.” She turned away from the closed door at the end of the hallway to meet his eyes. “You, I trust. But I don’t know your friend.”
Moodrow sat up in his chair, surprised to be getting down to business so quickly. “Tilley’s my partner. For better or for worse. And, by the way, if you’re gonna ask me serious questions, next time don’t start the conversation off with three ounces of bourbon.”
She smiled. When Moodrow was in a good mood, he was hard to resist. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “I’ll just pour the rest down the sink.”
Moodrow’s eyes opened wide. He grabbed the glass and held it away from her, like a parent teasing a child with a toy. “This is not the way to ask a favor,” he said flatly. He drained the half inch in the bottom of the glass, then handed it to her. “Why don’t you do that again, before we get down to work.”
As soon as she disappeared, Tilley turned to his partner. “Do you know what you’re risking when you drink on duty with a civilian? There are headhunters that’d eat you alive for that.”
“I’m not risking a fucking thing,” Moodrow replied. “I’ve been a cop for thirty-five years. What can they do? Make me retire? But you, you’re being smart. You don’t know Rose from shit and you got your whole career ahead of you. No good reason why you should take a chance. By the way, I really like this woman. You ever see that John Wayne movie? True Grit? Where he says about this kid, ‘By God, she reminds me of me?’”
Rose Carillo came back into the room, cutting off any response. Enveloped by Moodrow’s praise, her beauty struck Tilley again, as if it was something she pushed ahead of her whenever she entered a room. She was wearing a plain, white skirt and a white blouse, both made of some artificial fabric. A uniform, as it turned out, required by her doctor employer. The dress was old, the material soft; she had no slip underneath and the folds of the dress had more or less molded themselves to her legs. As she walked toward them, a glass of bourbon in one hand, orange juice in the other, Tilley had a hard time pulling his eyes from the point where legs and belly came together. He wondered, at the time, if she noticed it. Later he found out she could see him coming a mile away.
“What was I doing when you first met me, Moodrow? How long ago was it?” Her voice was much quieter.
“I think it was just before Lee was born,” Moodrow replied, sipping his drink. “You were living with your mother-in-law in the projects. I was after Levander for ripping off some kids.”
“So you don’t really know what I did before that?”
“Actually, I don’t.”
“Wanna hear it? My life story?”
“Do I have to?”
“Yeah, you gotta.” She crossed her left leg over her right, absentmindedly tugging the hem of her skirt down over her knee. “I grew up in Augusta, West Virginia, with my parents and one of my father’s brothers. It was a small railroad depot for the coal miners and we were the only Italians in the town. My mother never learned English and my father spoke only enough to describe carburetors that needed rebuilding and batteries that needed to be replaced. He beat me, my father, for all of my life. He beat me and my mother, beat us without anger, and he did it in front of his younger brother, carefully explaining why this was a necessary part of the care and treatment of women.
“My mother died when I was twelve years old and I got my period a week later. For a long time I thought the two events were related. My father, who always drank wine, took to whiskey and staying in the bars until they closed. His brother, Uncle Dominick, did his drinking at home. He began, secretly, to touch my breasts while I was working in the kitchen or cleaning his room.
“‘Rosey, you come inna here and clean up dissa spill. You Uncle Dominick make a big mess.’
“First my breasts, then lower, then naked on the bed; sweating over me, grunting, slobbering.” Her eyes never left Moodrow’s; her voice was even, as though she was describing a case history in a psychology class.
“I left home at fifteen. Stole three hundred dollars from a sock in my father’s drawer and got on a bus for New York. There’s no way to explain what it feels like to be a fifteen-year-old girl arriving at the Port Authority bus terminal. It seemed like there were more people in that building than in the whole state of West Virginia. Suddenly the toughness dissolves and the real questions—shelter, clothing, food, income—pour in.
“I drifted among the homeward-bound commuters and the alkies from the welfare hotels and the rip-off artists and the pimps, like a stick drifting down a river. I had done it. I’d gotten all the way to New York City and I had no idea what to do next. Believe it or not, with two hundred and fifty dollars in my purse, I was thinking of going to a hotel. In New York, two fifty would last about a day and a half.”
She flipped her head back, then ran long, thin fingers through her hair. “I was half-way through the main lobby at the terminal when a black kid, about my age, grabbed my purse and took off. Two steps later, before I could react, he was grabbed by another, older, kid. A man, really. That was Levander. He slapped the guy who took my purse the way you cuff a dog that won’t obey, then came back over to me.
“Naturally, I was grateful. I never suspected this was a scam Levander repeated as often as he felt he could get into the terminal without being arrested. Most times, the girl took the purse and went on her way, but once in a while someone came through with no idea where she was going or what she would do when she got there. A baby, really, like myself, who’d been beaten by her father and fucked by her uncle so many times she ran into the arms of the first man who’d both beat and fuck her. Such a girl, Moodrow, no matter where she comes to ground, finds Levander Greenwood waiting for her.
“He took me home for the night. Fed sweet and sour pork to a little country girl who’d never eaten a dish more exotic than a Pizza Hut pizza. Fed cocaine and reefer and a pharmaceutical luude to a girl who never even touched the wine passed at her father’s table.
“Two weeks later I was on the street. I worked Long Island City most of the time. The johns there always grab you as soon as you get in the car, to see that you’re not a transvestite. It’s all car sex. There’s no hotels.” She paused to gather up the empty glasses as if her confession were no more unusual than an old friend reminiscing on the days of her youth. Moodrow was sitting back in his chair, the glass of bourbon cradled in his lap, like he, too, had all the time in the world. “It took me a long while to realize that I was a prisoner. At first I was high all the time. High on dope mostly, though we smoked joints as casually as you’d smoke a cigarette and carried little pill boxes filled with Seconal and black beauties. Ups and downs, whichever way you needed to go. I thought it was heaven and as for the sex…we got off by despising the pitiful johns, so fucked up they bought the flesh of women who felt absolutely nothing for them.
“I think I probably could have gone on like that for a good ten years if Levander hadn’t decided to make me his permanent woman. He never explained why he did it; he never said, for instance, that he loved me or he was jealous of other men. One day, he simply announced that I was to live with him and not to sleep with anyone else. Ever. Three months after that he told me that we were going to be married and I was standing next to him, while a Baptist minister in a storefront church in Brownsville mumbled some bullshit about ‘do you take this man’ when I first realized that, as far as Levander Greenwood was concerned, I was a prisoner for life.
“But, fuck it, baby. I was still high all the time. So high that somehow, even though we rarely had sex, Levander managed to knock me up without my seeing it coming. I didn’t realize anything was wrong until my stomach was near the size of a watermelon. Levander was pleased as punch. He bragged to all his friends about what a great father he was going to be and just to prove his point, he cut me off from all drugs for the last month of my pregnancy.
“By the time Lee arrived, somehow healthy, in spite of my losing twenty pounds in two weeks, I knew I had to leave. I knew I was a human being in spite of my life up until that point. When they put Lee on my belly, I looked down at his curly wet hair and his closed eyes and my heart fell out of my chest. There’s no way to explain that feeling to someone who’s never felt it or to explain what it feels like to watch your child being beaten by a crazed animal named Levander Greenwood.
“You see, I made the mistake of telling Levander that I wanted to leave. Lee was about three months old and I was already pregnant with Jeanette. I should have known better. I’d been beaten by him and seen him beat other women many times, but I had some fantasy of living in the neighborhood. I was only eighteen, and despite three years of Levander, still naive in the ways of predation. Levander not only gave me a good ‘whippin,’ he took away all my money. I was given only enough to perform specific tasks and was expected to produce receipts.
“Then he went after Lee. He said that I loved the ‘little rat’ more than him. He complained that Lee cried too much. How could he not cry when the man who beat him nearly everyday started screaming at him? I was frantic. Sometimes I put myself between them. Sometimes I jumped on Levander’s back. But the result was always the same. The result was the sharp crack of his palm on Lee’s face. Or his fists on my ribs.”
Slowly, without making a great show of it and with no embarrassment whatsoever, she pulled the bottom of her blouse from her skirt and lifted it to reveal a row of greenish-purple bruises that ran from her lower ribs to her armpit.
“When Jeanette was a year old, Judge Sidney Weinstein dealt Levander five to ten for manslaughter. A plea bargain, by the way. Down from second degree murder. Believe it or not, I thought I was free. The day they convicted him, I went to the welfare offices near City Hall and spoke to Adrienne Epstein from ‘Battered Women.’ She got me into a residential treatment program on Staten Island where I stayed with fifty women who’d all been through the same thing. By the way, that was the most depressing part of the deal, admitting that what happened to me was common. That my suffering wasn’t special.
“I stayed there for six months, then I came back to this apartment. I had never lived alone before, never had to take care of myself, but I discovered that I thrived on freedom. I found my way into the office of a doctor friend of Adrienne’s and learned the Latin words, the names of the instruments, how to wheedle money out of patients who pleaded poverty, even how to type. The kids went to day care in the mornings and to Granny Louise and Auntie Marlee in the evenings when I worked late. I had no desire for sex or even for a relationship. My idea of fulfillment was getting my high school diploma. Of starting classes at Manhattan Community College. Of taking one lousy, three-credit anthropology course that turned out to be about as exciting as locking myself in a closet for six hours a week.
“Paradise, right? To be suddenly given a life after twenty years of dreaming … if you’ve never been there, you’ll never know. Anyway, six years later Levander Greenwood came out of prison. He was calling himself Kubla Khan, then, after the character in the poem and two days after they let him out, he showed up to reclaim his kingdom.
“I fought.” Her voice dropped now, deepened as she came to the point. Moodrow was sitting upright, his shoulders hunched forward as if protecting her. Or claiming her. “Naturally, I fought. The thought of letting him abuse my children panicked me. I was not the same woman anymore. I had the police take him out of the house and he came back and beat me up. I went to court and got an order barring him from coming within one hundred yards of me or my children and he came back and beat me. I had him arrested and they tried to violate his parole. He was inside for a month and the judge told him if he harassed me, he’d do another three years.
“Two days after his release, I found him in the apartment after I picked up the kids. He’d jimmied the window gate and busted open the window to get inside. He explained himself very clearly. ‘See what I’m gonna do is teach you about fuckin’ with me.’ He took Jeanette by the hand and dragged her into the bathroom. By this time, both the children were crying and I was begging him not to hurt them, but he just laughed and explained how he’d been too easy with us. Now he was going to show us the ‘hard edge of his will’ in such a way that we wouldn’t ever doubt him again.
“He filled the tub with hot water; it was midsummer and the landlord was sending it up scalding hot. Levander sat on the edge of the tub and let the steam boil around his face. I remember sunlight pouring through the leaded glass window and lighting up the beads of sweat on his neck. From somewhere in the distance, I heard my own voice. I was still pleading and Levander was still ignoring me. When he put Jeanette’s hand in the water I thought I would go mad.
“He held her hand under the water for a long time. I couldn’t count it. A second seemed like an hour, like there was no time at all, then somehow it was over. He told me, ‘Put these kids to bed, then come in your room. I’ll be waitin’ for you. And don’t you ever disrespect me again or else the little bitch’ll think this was her Saturday night bath.’
“Aren’t I entitled to a life? Doesn’t the Constitution say I have a right to have a life? Don’t my children have a right to their lives? Do we have to run and hide? Where do you run when you never have an extra dime? When you have to work fifty hours a week to pay the rent? But I’m still entitled to a life. It’s my right.”
She paused, her eyes riveted to Moodrow’s. Her face was strained, now, her eyes narrow. “How many murders is he wanted for? I saw his face on the news tonight and the newsman was talking about a dead cop. When you take him, you can do anything you want and nobody will give a shit about it.”
Moodrow reached out, as if to cover her mouth, but she was quicker. She laid her hand on his and gently pushed it down. “Kill him, Moodrow. It’s your job to protect the innocent, and even if I’m a whore and a junkie, the children will never be free as long as he’s alive. Never.
“I’ve already tried the ‘right’ way. I went to the cops and I went to the judge and they couldn’t protect me. What’s next?” She got up abruptly, walked to a cabinet laying against the wall and took out a small, automatic pistol. “I could shoot him, Moodrow. I’ve dreamed it a thousand times. But if I do, the cops—maybe you, eh?—will have to arrest me. The district attorney will have to move for an indictment. Maybe I’ll get lucky. Battered women are ‘in’ these days. Maybe I’ll find a good lawyer who’ll represent me for the publicity and a good jury to find me innocent. And then, after two years of hell, my children, if the state lets me keep them, can grow up knowing I blew their father away, a little added burden for two zebras coming up in New York. No, you’re the one, Moodrow. You have to see that it gets done. You have to protect us.”
She stopped cold then and the room filled with tension. Moodrow stood up, as if he was in a hurry to get somewhere, then realized he had no place to go and sat back down. He was smart enough to keep his mouth shut, but Tilley couldn’t resist stepping in. Not that he wasn’t moved by what she’d said. The urge to protect her was as powerful as the physical attraction a few moments earlier. It’s just that the answer seemed so obvious. “You know if he’s taken alive, he’s gonna get convicted of first degree murder? You know that, right? That’s for killing a cop. He’ll have to do forty years, minimum.”
She turned to him for the first time and when she spoke, her voice was patient, gentle. “I’ll never be safe as long as he’s alive,” she said. “He’ll never stop trying to get out and if he gets out he’ll come back to me. I’ll never go through a day knowing we’re safe. And there’s something else I haven’t told you yet. When Levander came by last week, he brought a man with him. I doubt very much if he was a friend.”
Like slapstick comedians doing a double-take, Moodrow and Tilley sat bolt upright in their chairs. The whole visit had been full of surprises, but this was the most unexpected of all. It put her request on a whole other level and all three of them knew it.
“If I give you the name, you’ll go after him and Levander will hear about it. He’ll know I gave it to you and he’ll come back. Well, I won’t be here, Moodrow. I’m going to stay with a friend in Washington Heights, but I can’t live there forever. I have to work. I have to go about the business of earning my life. I have to know that when the smoke clears, I’ll be free forever.”
“You got a lot of nerve, Rosie. You’re asking me to commit a murder. Asking me in front of a witness.”
“You told me you trusted him,” she replied evenly. “And I wanted someone else to hear you promise.”
“I haven’t promised.”
“Yet. My bags are already packed.” She smiled. “Why bullshit, Moodrow? Huh? Why bullshit? Levander isn’t the most popular fellow on the Lower East Side these days. The man he was with had to be some kind of a partner. He stood by the window the whole time Levander was here. Watched Levander beat me up without blinking an eye. For a change, Levander didn’t want sex. He wanted money and I didn’t have enough. Levander’s smoking crack, now, and he’s insane.”
Her assessment of the investigation was virtually identical to that of the two cops. Levander’s partner would be the map to the hidden treasure.
“How do you want me to do it? You want me to do it in front of witnesses? You think a cop can’t be indicted? Maybe I should kill the two hundred other cops that’ll probably be there when we take him, so no one can testify against me.”
Suddenly, Rose Carillo showed her anger for the first time. The muscles in her cheeks balled up and Tilley caught a glimpse of her determination. It was so close to that of Louise Greenwood, it shocked him. “Don’t fuck me around, Moodrow. You try to arrange it so that you’ll take him alone. That’s how you wanna do it anyway. If it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t. I’ll have to hope you can keep him in a cage, but if it does work, I’ll have a life for the first time. The kind of life that you take for granted.” She stopped then. Stopped to catch her breath, then sat back in her chair. “What’s the story, Moodrow? You in or out?”
A huge, wolfish smile. An angry smile, palms turned up. “I’m in, Rosie. Naturally, I’m in.”