WHEN MOODROW AND TILLEY left the Greenwoods’ wrecked apartment, they were no closer to Levander Greenwood than when they’d entered. In spite of his evident madness—an insanity which had put an old woman face to face with her own death—he’d not revealed a hint of his present whereabouts. His condition, though, was both a revelation and a new source of fear to Moodrow and Tilley. Crack junkies deteriorate quickly, much more quickly than, for instance, heroin addicts, who often maintain their habits for decades. This is because the most powerful and immediate effect of cocaine in any form—powder, freebase or rock—is to make the user want more. It’s the simplest and most honest way for the layman to understand the drug: as soon as you do a line, you want another.
In the days when Tilley was a white hope, he’d attended a number of parties where the coke was laid out on a huge mirror, an ounce or more, and there were always a group of people who sat around the mirror all night. Just staring into the pile until someone offered the straw. No matter how much they did, no matter how pure the cocaine, they wanted more and more and more and more.
It’s worse with crack. Smoking rock cocaine increases this effect, this desire for more and more and more by a factor of ten. No joke, here. Not even exaggeration. Some people can do cocaine and walk away from it. That was Tilley’s own experience. He did it once or twice, but he was lucky enough to come along after the first wave of cocaine use had destroyed some of the best fighters in the world. He knew what it could do, even that first time when he shared a gram with several close friends. Their plan was to save a small piece for the following day’s trip to the beach, but at two in the morning, when they did the last lines, Tilley knew there would be no trip to the beach. What he didn’t know was that about an hour later, lying naked on the bed, he would suddenly panic. That he’d be shaken by an awful fear that he believed could only be satisfied by cocaine.
That was the first time and the panic passed in about fifteen minutes. For terminal crack junkies like Levander Greenwood, the panic would last for days and would do more than shake his bones. Levander could easily pass through delusions (if not outright hallucinations) as complex and realistic as those of a paranoid schizophrenic. In the years since Tilley had quit the boxing business, he had three old ring buddies come to him with coke habits, begging him to help them get into treatment programs. They’d been using the drug for days at a time. Literally. One hit after another until exhaustion allowed them enough freedom for a few hours’ sleep. Tilley couldn’t get them into programs. The waiting lists held hundreds of names. Instead, he talked them through the first couple of days, only to see them fall back into the drug. What they experienced, as their bodies threw off the coke, can only be described as terror.
Both Moodrow and Tilley’s thoughts revolved around Levander and his mental and physical condition as they came down the stairs. Marlee and Louise Greenwood were already behind them; the hunt lay in front. What they didn’t anticipate was the fat cop huffing up the stairs to meet them. It was Sergeant Handelsman, the desk sergeant from PSU headquarters in building F, the man Tilley had met the first time they visited the Vladek Houses.
“Moodrow,” he called, stopping and waiting for the two cops to reach him. “I thought you might still be up here. You better come out quick. Levander got another one, by the laundry room.
He must have been waiting.” He stopped to catch his breath. “It’s Rose Carillo.”
Curiously, Tilley and Moodrow had the same initial reaction, though for different reasons. They stopped in their tracks and tried to collect the rapid fire thoughts exploding in their brains.
“Is she dead?” Tilley finally asked. His voice was barely a whisper. For an instant, he flashed back to his mother describing his fireman father’s death in an arsonist’s fire in the Bronx. He could clearly see the tears pouring down her face as she explained what a hero Daddy had been.
“No, one of ours scared him off,” Handelsman said easily. He had no idea of Tilley’s relationship with Rose. For him it was just another complication. Another pain in the ass that would require a mountain of paperwork and an apartment-by-apartment search of the Vladek Houses. “She’s beat up and she’s been stabbed deep, but she’s breathing all right and her heart’s strong. He stabbed her in the gut, so she’s probably bleeding inside. And there’s some broken bones.”
Tilley took off at a dead run, leaving Moodrow to explain it to Handelsman. His pulse was racing wildly and he was more frightened than he had ever been in his life. She must have followed them? Why? What did she hope to do for Louise and Marlee? What about the children? He pushed through the outer lobby door into the seeming chaos of a crime scene. The housing cops were controlling this one, but the sergeant in charge, O’Malley, was willing to give way to an NYPD detective, even a kid like Tilley.
“Where’s the bus?” Tilley asked first. He was referring to an Emergency Services ambulance. “You got an ETA?”
“They’re backed up about forty minutes. Even that’s a guess.”
“How bad is she?”
“She’s unconscious.”
“Can we take her in a car?”
“She’s got head injuries. She’s got to be immobilized.”
“Gimme your portable.”
Without questioning, O’Malley turned his portable over to the detective. Tilley wanted to scream into it, but he knew it would do no good. “Task Force Green. Green Five to Central. K.”
“Go ahead Green Five.”
“We need a bus at the Vladek Houses. Right now.”
“Hold on, Green Five.” There was a brief pause and the dispatcher came back on. Her calm voice was maddening. “No ETA possible at this time.”
“This task force has priority, Central. I want the first available bus. K.”
“I’ll try once more. Standby.”
Tilley desperately wanted to go to Rose’s side. She was lying on her back, a blanket under her head, about thirty feet away, and he could hear her moaning softly.
“Green Five, K.”
“Green Five,” Tilley returned.
“No earlier ETA possible on that bus. Emergency Services is backed up with elderly aided cases because of the heat. I will advise as soon as we have a definite.”
Tilley sighed. “10-4.” He looked up to find Moodrow standing behind him. “She followed me here,” Tilley explained. “He must have been waiting. I should have known she’d come. I should have figured it.”
By way of an answer, Moodrow put his arm around Tilley’s shoulders and led him over to Rose. A young man, an Asian, knelt beside her, a pressure pack in his hand. He looked up at Moodrow, then handed the big cop a business card: HOUSE CALLS, INC. Dr. Muhammad Bhutto.
“You’re a doctor?” Tilley asked. The man’s presence in the Vladek Houses was as miraculous to him as the appearance of the Virgin at Lourdes.
“I am a doctor.” His accent was pure British, clipped and upper class.
“This is personal, Doctor.” Moodrow stepped in, his arm still supporting his partner’s shoulders. “We have to know how she is. The truth. Not what you think I want to hear.”
“Your name, sir?” the doctor asked calmly.
Moodrow flipped his shield. “Detective Moodrow. This is my partner, Detective Tilley.”
Doctor Bhutto nodded. “Please realize that I am only able to view the external aspect of the woman’s wounds. However, as I am Pakistani and have worked in the Afghan refugee camps on the border of our countries, I am quite familiar with trauma. I am certain that she has not sustained a skull fracture in which bone has been displaced and that she has no severe spinal injuries because she is able to move her extremities freely. She is, of course, in shock and losing blood internally from a single stab wound. While the position of the entry wound is in the lower abdomen and her heart is untouched, we cannot rule out damage to any number of organs. It is also possible that a major artery has been cut, but as her color remains quite pink, I must consider that unlikely.”
“If her back and her head are all right, why can’t we take her to the hospital in a car?”
“She has severe rib injuries. Cracked or broken. I do not believe she should try to sit upright. I think we can wait for the ambulance. It’s an acceptable risk.”
“Bullshit,” Moodrow said. He walked away from Rose and searched the faces of the crowd standing outside the police barricades. “Hey Henry,” he said, suddenly striding toward a small, middle-aged man with a thin beard.
“I didn’t have nothing to do with this, Moodrow,” the man said as the big cop walked over to him.
“I need a favor.” Moodrow didn’t even bother replying to the ritual denial. “I need a van with no backseat. Maybe with a mattress. Like you sometimes use to carry television sets to your fence.”
Henry, to his credit, neither laughed nor denied the charge. “For Rosey?” he asked.
“Yeah. The fucking ambulance is gonna be late. We gotta get her to a hospital.”
“All right. Five minutes, but I have to drive it. It doesn’t go anywhere without me behind the wheel.”
“No problem.”
Henry hesitated for a moment, just long enough to ask, “When are you gonna kill this dude, Moodrow? He’s been around too long. You shoulda chilled him a long time ago.”
Fifteen minutes later, Rose was lying on a thin mattress in the back of a half-ton Dodge van. Doctor Bhutto was beside her and a patrol car was set to escort her to the hospital. It would run the lights and siren. While Tilley stood behind the van, Moodrow instructed the driver of the patrol car.
“No Bellevue,” he told the driver. “Take her to St. Vincent’s.”
“Bellevue is the best for trauma,” the cop said automatically. The theory was that emergency room physicians at Bellevue handled so many stabbings and gunshot wounds, they would be the best at treating Rose’s injuries.
“If Levander decides to go looking for her, Bellevue’s the first place he’ll try. I don’t want her anywhere he can find her.” The cop in the patrol car nodded his agreement and Moodrow walked to the side of the van. “Henry,” he whispered, “you’re going to St. Vincent’s on Seventh Avenue. Just follow the cop in front of you. By the way, if you don’t tell everyone where she is, there’s no way Levander can find her at St. Vincent’s. I owe you one.” Without waiting for a reply, he walked to the back of the van and stood beside an immobile James Tilley. “What do you want to do, Jimmy? You wanna go with Rose?”
Tilley looked at his partner in surprise. “No way, Moodrow. I can’t do anything for Rose but take Greenwood off the street. And that’s what I’m gonna do. We’re too close for me to spend the night in a hospital corridor.”
“Take off,” Moodrow yelled to the cop in the first patrol car and the two vehicles, the RMP and the van, moved toward Montgomery Street and FDR Drive. Moodrow and Tilley watched it for a moment, then turned to the housing cops still surrounding the crime scene. “Who caught the squeal?” Moodrow asked loudly.
A young cop, a black woman in uniform, stepped forward. “Patrolman Gorman,” she said calmly.
“Can you run it down for us?” Moodrow asked.
“I was in the house when we got a call from apartment 3C, Building G. A domestic dispute. Woman screaming between G and F Buildings. I came over to eyeball the situation and also heard screaming. I could see a man striking a woman and I drew my service revolver and called for him to stop. He turned to me and fired twice. A pistol. I ducked behind the corner of Building G, but was unable to return fire due to the close proximity of the victim. When I looked out, the perpetrator was gone. I then ascertained that the victim was badly injured and called for backup and a bus.”
“And you didn’t see him run into a building? Or have any idea where he went except that it was away from you?”
“That’s correct.”
For the first time, Tilley seemed to come out of his lethargy. “We’re just wasting time, Moodrow. The whole task force is here now. Let them do that shit work. Let’s get out of here.”
Moodrow looked around in surprise, noting the dozens of detectives and uniforms flooding the scene. As Handelsman had predicted, there would be a search, not only of the projects, but of the entire surrounding neighborhood. If Greenwood was out on the street, he would be snatched up within two hours. Even as Moodrow watched, the task force was setting up a mobile command post and dividing the neighborhood into sectors. Greenwood’s status as a cop killer was attracting off-duty cops from every borough. There was no sense in the two of them getting involved in the scut work. Let the pencil pushers plot the logistics. Without another word, Moodrow led his partner to their waiting Plymouth and they began to drive uptown.