THEY WERE TOGETHER IN the kitchen—Susanna Tilley, Jim Tilley’s mother, and Stanley Moodrow, his partner. Mugs of steaming-hot coffee sat on the table in front of them. Tilley supposed he should have been shocked (or at least surprised) to find them conspiring like old neighbors watching a soap opera, but somehow it seemed as natural as the progression of scenes in a movie he’d already watched. Or that moment at the top of the first hill on a roller coaster, when the clank-clank-clank of the chain hoist stops and the carnival, spread out below you, freezes solid.
“This is a great apartment,” Moodrow said, just as if they hadn’t gone over the same ground less than twenty-four hours earlier. “What have you got here. Five rooms?”
“Seven, actually,” Susanna Tilley answered. “Four bedrooms.”
“How’d you get it? I thought these places disappeared ten years ago.”
“We got this place right after Pete and I married. That was thirty years ago. It was a tenement then. Now people would kill to get it.”
“Thirty years rent control,” Moodrow observed. “You must have it for next to nothing.”
“Four-fifty a month.”
“I got the same thing, but not so big. I took my apartment on 5th Street near Avenue B when I got home from Korea. One bedroom. I pay three-fifty, but the landlord’s letting the building go down. Probably wants to convert it.”
Talking about housing (or the lack of it) is New York’s favorite pastime, but Tilley, though he knew his partner was only making polite conversation, was too pissed at finding Moodrow so comfortable to be more than civil. “What’s the scoop, Moodrow. What’d you come up here for?”
“I tried to reach you last night, but there was no answer.”
Moodrow handed his partner a copy of the Daily News. The front page photo showed two attendants loading a closed body-bag into an E.M.S. ambulance. The headline read COP KILLER HITS AGAIN. The incident had taken place just before the News went to press and the story was fairly sketchy, but the basics, two dead cops, another in critical condition and the name Levander Greenwood, came through well enough. Tilley tossed the paper back to Moodrow and poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Were they set up?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It seems like it could be, but I can’t figure out why.”
“Should I go inside?” Susanna Tilley asked. She pushed back her chair and started to get up.
“Suit yourself,” Moodrow shrugged. “But if you wanna stay, it don’t bother me.”
“Good,” she said. Avoiding her son’s sharp glance, she dropped back into her chair.
“The paper doesn’t say what the cops were doing there,” Tilley said. “Gotta be a tip, right?”
“Exactly. Someone dropped a dime and these were the first cops on the scene. The rat said Greenwood was holed up in 4D, but the word from the survivor is he and his partner were ambushed from an apartment on the second floor. Then the moron covering the front entrance Rambo’d his way up the stairs and got caught from behind. Didn’t even stop to call it in. When the task force showed up ten minutes later, they found the fourth cop still covering the back of the building.”
“That’s it? There was nobody in the apartment? Who was he there to see?”
“Apartment 4D was a burn-out. Abandoned. There was a mattress on the floor. A woman’s underwear on top of that. Clean underwear. Could be he was holed up there, but most likely he was out for a piece of ass.” He stopped suddenly and looked over toward Susanna Tilley. “Sorry, Susanna. Sometimes I get carried away.”
“That’s all right, Stanley.”
Moodrow looked over at his partner, pudgy-cherub expression firmly in place. “The task force knocked on every door. It’s a heavy crack building on a known crack block. The owner hasn’t paid the taxes in four years and as far as the city is concerned, the building is empty. In fact, there were signs of occupancy in every room, but except for a trio of homeless seniors on the third floor, the tenants had all abandoned ship. Hear me? Maybe twenty-five people in the building. They had to step over the bodies, but nobody bothered to drop a dime. Left the one cop bleeding to death.”
Susanna Tilley, somewhat unnerved, got up and went to the refrigerator. Without asking, she poured out three glasses of orange juice and began to crack eggs into a bowl.
“So how does it fit in with us?” Tilley asked.
“I doesn’t, really. The task force’ll search the building. Probably got thirty cops in there now, all waving tweezers and magnifying glasses. Think they’re gonna find Greenwood’s address in the dirt?” He leaned back in his chair, accepting the juice Susanna Tilley put in front of him. “The kids on the street are starting to make Greenwood into a hero. Kubla the Invincible. I’m talking about the ones that have a chance. The sixteen-year-olds trying to decide between dope and work. We don’t take the bastard soon, he’ll have disciples.”
“That’s why you came here? To lecture me? You could have done this over the phone.”
“Actually, I came here to talk to you about Rose Carillo. I want you to go up to see her.”
Tilley’s heart jumped in his chest. But, at the same time, he shifted his weight in response to a more basic sensation. “Something wrong?” he asked as innocently as he could.
“We gotta move her out of there. Or at least warn her if she won’t leave. Word’s already on the street that Greenwood knows she talked to us about Katjcic.”
“What if she doesn’t have any place to go?”
Susanna interrupted before Moodrow could answer. “That’s what Stanley and I were talking about before you got back.”
Tilley threw Moodrow a look that would have melted asbestos. Then his mother finished the message. She said, “We have so much room here. Don’t you think she could stay with us until her husband is out of the way? Stanley says it shouldn’t be more than a week or so.”
“Stanley should have asked me first,” Tilley returned evenly.
“He didn’t say a word, Jimmy. It was my idea completely.”
She looked so shocked that Tilley started laughing. There was no doubt in his mind that Moodrow had come there to set this up. No doubt whatsoever. Still, the image of Rose Carillo sitting in his living room, a glass of vodka in her hand, didn’t offend him at all. He wasn’t even surprised to find himself so eager.
Finally, Moodrow broke the silence. “Hey, if it’s inconvenient, we could always think of something else. It’s just that we gotta get her out of there if there’s anyone who knows where she is. I guarantee he’s gonna kill her if he gets the chance. That’s the word on the street. He’s bragging that he’s gonna chill her out before he gets it himself. Anyway, there’s no harm if you go up and talk to her. See if she’s got some place to go. I’m gonna stay on the backs of a few people who claim they’re close to Greenwood. Most likely bullshit, but I don’t feel like sitting home.”
Susanna Tilley dropped a bowl of scrambled eggs into a hot frying pan and the sharp crack of the eggs hitting the butter jolted their attention.
“I hope you’re not making breakfast for me,” Moodrow protested.
Susanna didn’t bother looking up. “Don’t worry. I only made enough for me and Jimmy. You weren’t hungry, were you?”
“No, no.”
“Sure? You could have Jimmy’s eggs if you want.”
“I couldn’t take his eggs.…”
She executed a quick turn and dropped a plate in front of him. “Shut up and eat, Stanley.” Then she went back to the stove and filled two more plates.
Moodrow watched her retreat, his eyes glued to her backside. Tilley kicked him under the table, not even knowing what he meant by it, and Moodrow turned calmly back to his partner. Automatic respect for a friend’s mother may be dying out, but in Moodrow’s time, it was as unquestioned as patriotism. Tilley knew he had no right to interfere (it wasn’t the first time he’d seen a man stare at her), but watching it made him itch, especially considering his own quick fantasy of Rose Carillo’s lips on his.
“You should come to my house tomorrow early,” he said. “Eight o’clock. We’re gonna talk out Katjcic’s tip with Epstein and someone from the D.A.’s office. These are people I trust, Jimmy. Other than them, let’s keep it entirely quiet.”
In the course of his run, Tilley had considered every aspect of the Greenwood case except Katjcic’s assertion that another cop was behind it. If it was true that some cop, probably a detective from the 7th, was running Levander, the man was responsible for the deaths of ten people, including four cops. That didn’t seem possible, but Katjcic had been very convincing and neither one of them thought he was lying. Not that he (or they) couldn’t be wrong.
“Eight o’clock’s a little early for a Sunday, isn’t it?”
“What could I do? Epstein’s driving out to Riverhead to visit his grandchildren. He wants to get an early start.”
“Figures. We gonna be there all day? Do we get the afternoon off at least?”
“Yeah, your mom told me you were going out.” He shrugged without looking at Tilley. “But I don’t know. Epstein’ll pull Greenwood’s entire package and photocopy it tonight so nobody should know it left the precinct. Tomorrow, after he leaves, we’ll go over it with the D.A.’s man. I don’t remember any hint that Greenwood’s a snitch, but we’ll make a list of the cops that busted him and work up any likely candidates. If that don’t work, we can pull the files of every narc in the precinct, one at a time, and see if there’s any mention of Greenwood.”
“Fine, but when do we finish tomorrow? I mean if the assistant D.A.’s running the show, just tell me. I’ll understand.”
Moodrow glanced up, clearly annoyed, and Tilley threw him his best Irish altar boy look.
“You know what scares me?” Moodrow abruptly changed the subject. His voice was very low, his eyes riveted to the tabletop. “If we call in the headhunters at Internal Affairs they’ll tear the precinct apart. The captain won’t take it. Me neither. We’ll be retired in six months.”
“What’s Internal Affairs?” Susanna’s voice shocked both of them.
“Internal Affairs are the cops that put other cops in jail,” he responded. “When they decide to run through a precinct, nobody’s immune. They find one cop who’s on the take and use him as a wedge to batter the whole force. Or they take a thief or a dealer and have him offer bribes to arresting officers. That’s when cops stop caring about the people they’re supposed to protect. When they get frightened, they always react by trying to avoid contact with the public as much as possible. They expect to be set up by the headhunters and they don’t trust anyone.”