“YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE DONE that to those motorcycles,” Jim Tilley said for the third time. He pulled at a bottle of Heineken and eyed his partner narrowly. “You can’t destroy private property.”
“It looked to me like you were having fun,” Moodrow said quietly. “I’m sorry if I got the wrong impression.”
Tilley shook his head in disgust. “It’s not a question of enjoying it or hating it. It’s a question of being a cop and wanting to stay a cop. I know about you. Everyone on the job knows about you.”
Moodrow turned and signaled to the barmaid for another beer. They were sitting in a booth in the Killarney Harp, on Houston Street, and the smell of the steam table was making him hungry. He would eat as soon as his partner left. In the meantime, though he was off the clock, he had work to do.
“So what do they say about me?”
“They say you think you own the law. They say you’re still living in the old days. When cops were like God.”
Moodrow laughed. “Like God, huh?” He paused to accept the beer offered by the barmaid, pulling on it eagerly. The sweat had dried on his body, but his suit was still damp and plastered to every fold and crevice of his body. He was very uncomfortable, but a few more beers would make it better. They always did. “So you’re gonna tell me you never went outside the Patrol Guide? I don’t buy it.”
Tilley blushed, a sudden rush of color brightening pale Irish cheeks. “Even if I did make some mistakes, that doesn’t mean I have to keep on making mistakes. If Gunther Baumann gets hold of a lawyer, we’ll be written up. At the least. Maybe it doesn’t matter to you. Maybe what you said before is right—all they can do is make you retire.”
“You married, Tilley?” Moodrow suddenly changed the subject, a technique common to interrogations, but not altogether appropriate to barroom conversations.
“You know I’m not. You read my file.”
“I mean, do you live with someone? An old lady. Without benefit of clergy.” Moodrow stopped long enough to drain his glass. The beer was refrigerator cold, but the thirst he’d built up during his workout wouldn’t go away. “It ain’t that uncommon right? I been known to do it myself, on occasion.”
“I live uptown. In Yorkville. With my mother.” Tilley glared at his partner. The mother bit always embarrassed him. Next, Moodrow would be asking him if he was some kind of a fag.
“Is your mom sick?” Moodrow ignored the signal coming from his partner.
“Look, we got a four-bedroom apartment up there. Rent-controlled. My father took it five years before he died and we been there ever since. I mean, we’re paying less than five hundred a month for it. Where am I supposed to go? If I left that apartment, I wouldn’t be able to afford Manhattan. I’d probably end up on Long Island.”
Moodrow motioned to one of the barmaids, a Spanish girl named Cheena, for two more bottles of beer, then abruptly came back to the original topic of conversation. “Okay, you’re ambitious. I don’t have no problem with that. But if you wanted to work your way up in the job, you should have stayed away from the detectives. You should have stayed on patrol. Then you could have got promoted by studying for the exams. Sergeant, lieutenant, captain. You pass, they gotta move you up. In the detectives you get promoted for the busts you make and the influence you got in the big house. And this bust, Jim Tilley, is a big one. You take Levander Greenwood outta the brass’s hair and they’ll kiss your ass from here to City Hall.”
Moodrow paused, but Tilley had no answer to his partner’s questions. He was asking himself why he hadn’t stayed on patrol. His experience at Fordham had demonstrated the strength of his memory. Promotional exams in the NYPD were all memory, re-hashings of the Patrol Guide. Without meaning to, Jim Tilley reached into his jacket pocket and touched his gold shield, the symbol of the New York detective. In some ways, even the lowest detective has more status than the commissioner. Like a Green Beret standing next to a senator.
“So what’d ya do?” Moodrow asked, his voice still matter-of-fact.
“What did I do when?”
“C’mon. In Fort Greene. You said a minute ago that you pulled some shit when you were on patrol. Tell me what you did.”
Tilley couldn’t help but grin. “You’re a nosy son of a bitch,” he announced.
“I’m a cop. It’s my job.”
“And how about you? What have you done?”
Moodrow giggled, the high-pitched sound trickling out over the table. “If I start with that, we’ll be here till next week. Levander will die of old age before we get through.”
“That’s another thing,” Tilley insisted, pulling himself up. “I don’t know what made you promise those two women, but if you’re really planning to execute Levander Greenwood, you better find another partner. That shit went out fifteen years ago. The headhunters watch too close these days. Not to mention the newspapers.”
“You think we’re gonna be alone when we take Greenwood?” Moodrow asked innocently. “There’s gonna be a fucking army, for Christ sake.”
“Why don’t I believe you?” Tilley grinned. His emotions had been on a roller coaster all afternoon. First the bizarre stories of Louise Greenwood and Rose Carillo, then the heart-pounding insanity of Satan’s Gentlemen, now the air-conditioned bar and his third ice-cold beer. It was like the parties he’d thrown after big victories in the amateurs, when he still hoped to make the Olympic team.
“Tell you what, Jimmy. When the time comes to take Mr. Greenwood, you can call the shots: who gets involved; how we go in; what we do with him. How’s that?”
“What we do with him, Moodrow, is put him in cuffs and take him to jail.”
“Fine with me.” Moodrow spread his hands as if he had no objection to standard operating procedure. “Now tell me about Fort Greene.”
Tilley’s grin spread to cover the lower part of his face. Then he leaned forward. “There was one scumbag in the Two One Four. Name was Daniel Roberts. Called himself Chubs. Liked to get drunk, snort a little coke and spend the weekend beating on his wife and kids. Heavy dumpings, Moodrow. Broken bones. Lost teeth. Faces always swollen and that wet purple color that looks like it’s about to explode. You’d take the bastard away and the next night he’d be back. The courts don’t give a shit what you do to your family if you’re black or Puerto Rican and you got a job. But even when the courts ordered him to stay away, I think his old lady used to invite him back if he had any money. Sometimes these violent guys can talk very sweet and innocent.
“I didn’t make a real decision to get him. Patrolmen are always moving from one call to another. Like you said, we never get to follow through on anything. We show up at a crime, secure the scene, interview the witnesses, then turn whatever we got over to the detectives. But every time I saw the bastard, I used to get mad and one night, I remember it was freezing cold and near Christmas, I sort of let my feelings catch up to even. I came across him arguing with another man, a nickel-and-dime pot dealer. Chubs was drunk and rowdy, as usual.
“I slid my nightstick out of my belt and walked over. The dealer, who was facing me, turned and began to walk the other way. He knew the argument would give me probable cause for a frisk and he was obviously dirty. Chubs, on the other hand, was too drunk to realize how fragile his situation was.
“‘What you want, pig?’
“I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I knew I couldn’t just let it end there. I started out by calling him a subhuman piece of shit. I was almost whispering. I told him he should be in a cage instead of on the street. There was all kinds of hesitation in his eyes. Not that he was afraid. He was too drunk to be afraid. He just couldn’t figure out what I was after.
“So I showed him what I was after by spitting flat in his face and he finally took a swing at me. There was no chance that he was going to hit me. It was a set-up all the way. I stepped off to the left, waited until he stumbled forward, then swung the nightstick with both hands like it was a baseball bat.
“The only thing that saved me from a departmental investigation was that he did have a knife in his pocket along with a small vial of cocaine. And I didn’t kill him. I just fixed it so he wouldn’t eat solids for six months and required seven operations to reconstruct his lower face.”
By the time Captain Allen Epstein made his way to the Killarney Harp, Moodrow was on his second plate of corned beef and cabbage and Detective Jim Tilley was having a celebratory dinner with his mother in a German restaurant in Yorkville. The empty beer bottles had been collected and replaced with coffee and Moodrow had visited the men’s room to wash his face with cold water.
“You mind if I sit?” Epstein asked, jerking Moodrow’s attention away from his plate.
“You gotta ask? What’s the matter with you?”
“Same old shit, Stanley. With three lieutenants in the precinct who already passed the captain’s exam, you can’t expect no peace. They’re like vultures, for Christ sake. Like kids waiting around for Grandpa to kick off. Come to me with those shit-eating grins. ‘Just a suggestion, Captain.’ I look in the mirror and I think I’m a hundred years old.” He stopped long enough to order a Miller’s from a passing waitress, then launched back into it. “I’m looking at property in Florida. Me and Alma. Not that I’m going without a fight, but I wanna be ready. It’s my nature, for Christ sake. So how’d you make out with young Jim Tilley?”
“It’s like I figured. He’s ambitious and he thinks he has to do things by the book. But he can’t get rid of that macho prizefighter bit, either. Kid’s living in two worlds. He’s not street-wise, but he is street-hard and he’s got a fucking brain. That’s the important part. He’s too smart to get lost in the bullshit. I just gotta find a way to make him realize it. I gotta make him understand that he cares about the civilians. That there ain’t no point, if you don’t.”
Quickly, Moodrow outlined the day’s events, including Katjcic’s assertion that Greenwood’s partner was a cop. He’d deliberately held back that piece of news, knowing the effect it would have on his friend. Allen Epstein had spent his working life trying to protect the 7th Precinct from outsiders and now the headhunters would descend in droves, drawn like flies to the blood of a corrupt cop.
“I can’t say I haven’t considered it,” Epstein admitted, “but it still hurts. The dope is what does it. Too much money out there. You going to the task force with it?”
“I really don’t think we can do that. We might be pumping information right back to Greenwood.”
Moodrow sat back and sipped his coffee, considering the options. Word of a scandal in the 7th would effectively end Allen Epstein’s career. As would any extensive delay in the apprehension of Levander Greenwood. And without Allen Epstein to cover his back, Moodrow’s own career had the life expectancy of a butterfly in a blizzard.
“How long you think we have before the brass comes down on us?” Moodrow asked.
“They’re already checking in. I got a call from the commissioner asking me to give the case my ‘personal’ attention. Then the chief called, then a deputy mayor. It’s gonna be a fun investigation.”
“Actually,” Moodrow said, sincerely, “I’m looking forward to it.”
“I wish my goddamn ulcer could say the same,” Epstein returned. “The sad part is I remember when I used to jump into cases like this. I was eager. Now all I wanna do is make the precinct quota for summonses and go home. Which I can never even do that ’cause the goddamn portables won’t give out tickets unless the sergeant points at the car and says, ‘Write.’”
Moodrow had heard all this before. Heard it many times over the years. It was irrelevant to him; he had never been part of the bureaucracy of the job. But he knew he could trust Epstein and that, for all the bullshit, Epstein wanted Greenwood as badly as Moodrow did.
“So what’re you gonna do, Captain?”
Epstein sat up straight. “Any patrolman doesn’t make his quota is gonna get vacation time in February. I’ll have the bastards working traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge in a snow storm. I don’t…”
“For Christ sake, man. I’m not talking about tickets. I’m talking about Greenwood.”
“Greenwood?”
“Yeah, Greenwood. The guy who killed a cop and a journalist. Remember?”
“I think I’ll go to the D.A.’s office. See if we can keep the cop thing under wraps without going too far outside of regulations. What about you? What’re you gonna do tonight?”
Moodrow tossed his napkin onto his plate and stood up. “I’m gonna go to work. What else would I be doing?”
But Allen Epstein’s beeper went off before Moodrow could get the check, and the obligatory telephone call transmitted news of gunshots fired, of cops killed and wounded, of an urgent summons to a deathbed in a private room at Bellevue Hospital.
Even as they left the bar, Epstein was composing two statements: one for the press and one for the brass.