THEY DROVE DIRECTLY TO the Lip Cafe, a small, trendy restaurant fronting Tompkins Square Park. The owner, Frank Parisi, an uptown entrepreneur, had become friendly with Moodrow when he’d been attempting to establish his business. Continuous vandalism had nearly driven him back uptown, but Moodrow had acted as an arbitrator with the local street gangs and negotiated a peace which, surprisingly, had held up. The destruction had ended as soon as the owner stopped calling the precinct and complaining about menacing characters hanging around his establishment.
“Frank,” Moodrow said, without even a preliminary hello, “I need your office and your phone for a couple hours. And some dinner.”
“Hey,” Frankie smiled his most hospitable smile. “You don’t even gotta ask. Take as long as ya like. I’ll send you a waitress.”
“Send Gretchen.”
“You like Gretchen?” Frankie asked.
“I like to bust her balls,” Moodrow replied.
Each of the cops made a phone call while they waited for the waitress to arrive. Moodrow called Epstein and made arrangements for Rose’s protection. It would be impossible to keep the task force ignorant of her whereabouts, but Moodrow could make sure that cops assigned to watch her were good and he pushed Epstein to call in some favors from another precinct, to get a squad of anti-crime street cops from uptown assigned to protect her. If there was enough firepower around her door, even Levander couldn’t blast his way inside.
Tilley called his mother, Susanna, and ran down the attack on Rose, assuring her (and himself) that Rose would be all right. In the meantime, she would have to take care of the children, to explain what had happened as best she could. There was no chance he would get home for hours and at least a possibility that he would not get home at all.
Susanna Tilley took it in without asking a single question. She, too, recalled a scene that had taken place long before; of trying to tell a little boy that his father would not be coming home; of trying to make death real to a small child while she held back her own grief. “Don’t worry about it, Jimmy. We’ll be all right. But, for God’s sake, get this man off the street.”
After the phone calls were made, they began to discuss drugs in general and Greenwood’s condition in particular. Moodrow wasn’t surprised when Tilley told of his experiments with cocaine: Moodrow was a long time advocate of the legalization of drugs. (“If some asshole wants to shoot dope and become a zombie, what do I give a fuck? As long as he don’t steal my television, let ’im do what he wants.”) He was, however, just as glad to know that Tilley wasn’t presently doing anything heavier than a Schaefer and an occasional joint. And he agreed with him about Levander’s condition.
“The street’s already canonized the mighty Kubla Khan. They’re making him a cop-killing superhero. Fucking mutt’s probably living in a basement hole in some abandoned tenement. Well, I promise you one thing, Jimmy. He ain’t got another week. I’m so close I can smell him. I can feel myself settling up for Marlee and Rose and all the rest of them.”
They were interrupted by the waitress, a heavy-set young woman in a frumpy, black dress that looked as if it came down secondhand from a Ukrainian widow. Her hair was also black, jet black—except for three silver spikes, sprinkled with glitter, that stood straight up in the air.
To say the two cops were out of place in the Lip Cafe is to put it as mildly as possible, but Moodrow was wild about the chimi-changas and they placed their orders without considering the ambiance. Cops are not nearly as callous as the media likes to paint them, but they know they cannot carry that pain with them, so they bury it. And become alcoholics. Or swallow the gun. Or clown it up at inappropriate moments.
Thus, fifteen minutes later, even as Moodrow analyzed Levander Greenwood and the investigation, two things happened, right on cue. His beeper went off and the waitress arrived with several steaming plates of food. The beeper was the signal to go to the apartment on 11th Street and wait for Cecil, which only made the food seem more appetizing, and Moodrow asked the waitress to wrap it up.
For a moment, she didn’t react, just stood there with her hands on her hips, staring at them. Finally, she said, “Ya know somethin’, Moodrow? You’re really a pain in the ass.”
“Is that what you like?” he asked.
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”
“A pain in the ass. Is that what you like?”
She wasn’t stupid enough to reply, but as she picked up the plates, Moodrow fired a final shot. “Because if that’s what you like, you should come to my place tonight and we’ll play a little game with my .38.”
Without bothering to turn around, she shrugged her shoulders and said, “I’ll take you up on that, fatso. The day you learn to lick your eyebrows.”
Fifteen minutes later, they were in the apartment on 11th Street. Lucille had taken her seat and was busy doing the panty bit with her legs. This time she added a special treat. She was wearing a plain white cotton t-shirt with two circular targets, one over each breast. The bull’s-eyes were right on her nipples. She excused herself immediately upon entering the room, complaining of the heat, and splashed her face with cold water from the sink in the toilet. In the process, she also soaked the shirt so that her breasts jumped up like two trout from the surface of a pond. All through this performance (and all through her partner’s conversation, which she never interrupted), her features remained frozen. Except for her lower jaw, which slowly worked the wad of gum in her mouth.
“You were right, Moodrow. About Blue Thunder. It didn’t come back on with Greenwood.” Cecil opened the negotiations with a flat statement, then stopped dead, but Moodrow waved his arm wearily.
“No play, tonight, Cecil. Just tell me.”
“This is very important to you. This should be worth something,” Cecil insisted. “We’ve been talking to each other three fucking years already. You gotta do better than ‘just tell me who.’”
Moodrow’s face turned to stone. His features seemed to shrink back into his skull and Cecil found herself staring at a white rock with two black dots about a third of the way down. “Listen,” the rock said, “If you don’t tell me who’s holding that dope, you ain’t walking out of this apartment. If you think I’m kidding, just keep fucking me around.”
Cecil stamped her foot in amazement. Even Tilley, who was so excited he could barely remain seated, read in her eyes a clear desire to drive that same foot into Moodrow’s face, perhaps to see if it was as hard as it looked. But Moodrow towered over her like the giants in Jeanette’s nightmares and Cecil had to content herself with complaining. “This is bullshit. You never been like this. I never woulda started up with you, if you were like this. What the fuck is the matter with you?”
“I’m in a hurry, Cecil.” He hesitated for a moment, then his face opened up, as if he’d made a decision. “Look, I’m passing on all that shit about Chelsea and Elio. I’m trying to take care of that. Correction. I think I will take care of that. But I don’t have time to talk about it tonight. I want you to tell me who it is and then take off. You understand what I’m saying?”
The carrot and the stick. Threaten, then offer a bone. Tilley recalled a piece of advice Moodrow had given him regarding informants. He’d advised his partner to run them the way a pimp runs a stable of whores. Watching Lucille’s tits rise and fall with each breath, Tilley was suddenly completely relaxed, indifferent, really, to the conversation, because he knew his partner would, in fact, break their legs before he would allow them to walk out without giving him what he wanted. To Moodrow, Cecil was not a female. She wasn’t even a criminal or a businesswoman. She was a stepping stone on the path to Levander Greenwood and he was prepared to “step” as hard as necessary.
“You know a boy named Johnny Mitchell? They call him ‘pinky,’ because he’s white.”
“I heard of him, but I don’t know what he looks like.”
“He’s a runt. A dead-end junkie dealing out of the men’s shelter on Lexington Avenue. Dealing Blue Thunder. I know someone who copped last night.”
“You sure? The person told you this is reliable?”
“Ninety-nine percent. The story goes that Pinky Mitchell suddenly has more dope than ever before in his life. And his regular spot is inside the armory on Lex.”
“I know where it is,” Moodrow replied. Tilley could almost hear his partner’s mind racing away with the information.
Suddenly Cecil broke the tension. She put her hands on her hips and smiled thinly. “Can we leave now? Did we give you enough, Sergeant? Or should I call you sir? Sir Moodrow.”
By way of an answer, Moodrow took her hand and kissed the backs of her fingers. “Thanks, Cecil.”
As soon as she’d gone, Moodrow filled his partner in. Pinky Mitchell was a white kid from Alabama who’d gone the whole New York route: from promising kid-exec in midtown; to hip art dealer in SoHo; to cocaine dealer in the West Village; to heroin addict; to small-time, homeless pusher.
“Why would he live in the shelter if he’s a dealer?” The question was naive, even by Tilley’s standards.
“The kid’s a terminal junkie. Whatever he makes from dealing or boosting from the stores, he shoots up. Little items, like food and shelter that you and me gotta work for, he gets courtesy of the city. The dirtball’s been living in the fucking shelter so long, it’s like his office. Other junkies know to look for him there. And that makes all kinds of problems for us.”
“How so?”
“In the first place, it’s not in our fucking precinct. It’s in the One Three. Second, shelters are guarded by private security. The shelter Pinky’s dealing from has metal detectors where you come in the main entrance. Maybe five or six security guards.”
“I still don’t see why we can’t put fifty uniforms inside and just take him. He’s not expecting us. He wouldn’t even know what we’re after.”
“Fine. But what are we gonna take him for? What cause do we have to stop and frisk him? Much less arrest him.” He paused for effect, then went on like he was training a hamster. “Besides which, if Mitchell gets arrested, the suits at the One Three are gonna take the collar. Plus, if you bust a junkie, you gotta take him to the hospital if he asks for it. After which comes a Legal Aid lawyer and you lose two weeks before you get to the bastard. Fuck that. There’s a dirty cop here and he’s stinking up the whole fucking precinct. I don’t know where that cop is or when he’ll find out that we took Mitchell. Don’t forget, the cop has gotta be running Greenwood and Pinky Mitchell. Greenwood rips it off, passes it to the cop who passes it to Mitchell.”
“I hear what you’re saying. You know how many junkies I saw walking a beat in Brooklyn? The life expectancy of a car radio in Fort Greene is about twenty minutes. The neighborhood’s infested.”
“Fine. Then you know fucking Pinky Mitchell cannot be running with Levander Greenwood. It’d be like the rabbit running with the wolf.”
There was nothing more to say on that point. Of course, they’d expected a buffer all along, a middleman between the rip-off and the resale and this only confirmed their suspicions. “So, tell me what you wanna do,” Tilley said, and felt the roller coaster take a sudden twist before dropping almost straight down.
“There’s no fucking trick to it,” he explained. “It ain’t subtle.
We take Mitchell out of the shelter and bring him back here. Junkies will sell their mothers’ assholes for a fix. We let Pinky Mitchell get sick, he’s gonna tell us who’s running him.”
Tilley couldn’t help smiling. He said, “You know what, Moodrow? All those things you just said are right? We sneak in the shelter without anyone knowing. We smuggle one junkie out of the building. We get this junkie down in this basement. The junkie gives us what we want. A very tight chain of logic. Real detectivelike. The only problem is that we have to commit a number of crimes in the process. Not the least of which is kidnapping.”
“Does that bother you?” Moodrow looked surprised, then anxious, then innocent.
“Fuck, no. But later on it leads to more problems. Like when we take the cop, who’s gonna testify against him? Are we supposed to admit that we kidnapped and tortured a witness? If we can’t make an arrest on the cop, how do we get him to give up Greenwood?”
Moodrow stopped him with a wave of his hand. “I don’t give a shit. And I’m not buying that crap says you can’t let a guilty man go free. The first thing is to get Levander Greenwood off the street, before he kills anyone else. Lemme get that done before I worry about the lawyers.” He stopped again and fixed Tilley with his hardest stare. It was almost as hard as that of a Latvian middleweight who’d knocked Tilley out one summer night when he was still an amateur.
“Look, Jimmy, I’m gonna make you a promise. You give me the junkie and I’ll get the cop. You give me the cop, I’ll get you Levander Greenwood. I guarantee it.”
Whooooooooooooooooooooooosh. Like stepping off a cliff. Judge, jury and…What would Tilley say later on? “Moodrow made me do it, your Honor. I’m just a kid and I didn’t know any better.” Moodrow had thirty-five years in. Thirty-five years of playing on the edge. Now it was Jim Tilley’s turn and his career was the last thing on his mind. He thought of Rose, limp and moaning, being hoisted into a van. It was all personal. Every bit of it. To play it according to the Patrol Guide would mean long delays and delays were no longer even thinkable to James Patrick Tilley.
“We won’t go in tonight,” Moodrow explained. “I can get a floor plan of the shelter and some more exact information on Mitchell’s operation. I know a security guard there who owes me a favor. Probably take the rest of the night.”
“What about me?”
“You get to go back uptown. Try to do something for the kids. We’ll meet tomorrow afternoon and take Mitchell sometime tomorrow night.”
“I’m not coming with you now?”
“I want you should be the one to go inside. So nobody should see you with me.” He laughed. “Tomorrow night, around six o’clock, you’re gonna become homeless.”
“You want me to go inside the men’s shelter by myself?”
“Yeah. You go in the front door like any other dirtball. But you go out one of the back doors. I don’t know exactly how, but I’ll have it worked out by tomorrow.”
“I suppose I have to go in clean? No gun? No badge?”
“Of course. I told you already. They got metal detectors in the front entrance.”
“And if someone recognizes me?”
“Run like hell.”
Jim Tilley stopped at St. Vincent’s before he headed back uptown. Stubbornly refusing to take the nurse’s evaluation of Rose’s condition as “serious,” he ran down the resident, Doctor Samuel Morris, who’d admitted her. The man was asleep in a private room. He’d been on call for thirty-six hours, but he showed no annoyance when Tilley woke him, not even surprise.
“She’ll be all right,” he announced firmly. Tilley could not read any doubt in his tone.
“How much damage is there?”
“The stab wound went deep enough, but except for nicking her liver, managed to avoid anything really damaging. Her biggest problem right now is potential infection from the blade. We’re anticipating that by feeding her intravenous antibiotics. And, of course, she has a hairline fracture of the skull. Just above the right ear. I think he must have hit her with a brick. There was red dust in the wound. Head injuries sometimes go bad, no doubt about it. There’s also two broken ribs on the right side, but no damage to the lung.”
Tilley hesitated for a second, before asking the question, but, he knew, if he didn’t ask it this way, he couldn’t be sure of her condition. “Is there any chance that she’ll die?”
The doctor looked surprised, then fed it to the cop without flinching. “The most dangerous time for her was when she was on the table. Under anesthesia. She came through that without complications. Right now, in a woman her age, I’d say the chances of her going so bad we can’t save her are one in five hundred. That doesn’t mean, by the way, that she won’t be in pain for a long time.” He waited for the cop to take it in, then continued. “Look, I’m not so stupid or so tired that I can’t see she means a lot to you. I’ll watch out for her. If you want some real information, call the hospital, ask for the paging operator and have her find me. I’ll give you whatever time I can, but, for now, it’s ‘goodnight and please call me in the morning.’ I’ve been up for a long time.”
Susanna was holding a sleeping Jeanette on her lap when Tilley walked into the apartment. She smiled and got up to carry the child into her bedroom. Lee, on the other hand, was wide awake. He was watching an HBO special, a boxing match between the cruiserweight champion, Richard Hartfield, and a pretty good light-heavy, Matthew Johnson. Tilley’d made a mental note to watch the fight a few weeks before, then had forgotten all about it.
“Tilley, come here,” Lee ordered, indicating the seat next to him. It was the first time he’d asked Tilley for anything and Tilley didn’t waste the opportunity by resenting Lee’s tone of voice. He walked over and sat next to him.
“Who’s winning?” Tilley asked.
Lee pointed to the tall man with the sharp features, and Tilley said, “That’s Richard Hartfield. He’s the champion. The other guy is Matthew Johnson.”
Without looking at him, Lee said, “The champion is kicking the shit out of Matthew Johnson.” He was seven years old. “Could you kick the shit out of him?” He pointed to Hartfield again.
Tilley didn’t say anything for a moment. Just sat there watching the champion as he twisted his body away from the looping punches of a smaller, slower opponent. Hartfield had a way of bending backward at the waist, allowing left hooks to pass harmlessly in front of his face. Then he’d come back over the top with devastating rights. It was a very unusual move and Tilley drifted back to his days in training. At first glance, Richard Hartfield was the perfect opponent for him. He stood ramrod straight, his chin in the air. It looked like an easy target, that chin, but it was almost never there when other fighters tried to hit it.
“No, I don’t think so. I’m not in training anymore.” His explanation left out the conviction that on his best day, he wouldn’t have made a decent sparring partner for the likes of Mr. Hartfield.
“I could,” Lee said quietly.
“Could what?”
“I could kick his ass.”
“And how would you do that?”
Lee reached into the crevice between the armrest and his cushion, withdrawing a black-handled carving knife. It was thick, sharp and almost as long as his forearm. His face was earnest and very serious as he met Tilley’s eyes. “I could kick the shit out of him.”
Tilley didn’t argue the point, or try to take the knife away. They sat in silence as Hartfield slowly beat his man into submission. The process took another four rounds and by the time it was completed, Susanna had returned from the kitchen and was talking with Lee about computers.
Exhausted, Tilley excused himself and went to bed. It was still early, but he drifted off almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. He saw one last image before he passed into oblivion. He saw Moodrow and Greenwood as enormous sumo wrestlers charging from opposite ends of a wrestling mat.
Then he dreamed of the odor of his lover’s throat. It filled each breath. They were wrapped in each other’s arms and she was already maneuvering her body to receive him. Afterward, they both began to cry. The intensity was beyond pleasure. It was devouring, and when Rose said, “I love you, Jim Tilley,” he was so frightened, he almost screamed.