Piece of the Action (39 page)

“I don’t know about that,” Carmine said. “There’s always Stanley.”

The two men looked at each other and grinned.

“
Leave Stanley alone
,” they shouted in unison.

“I don’t get it,” Faci said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Favara responded. “Let’s worry about Santo Silesi instead. Santo’s
real,
if ya take my meaning.”

“I been tryin’ to think of somethin’ all night,” Faci said. “But I keep comin’ up blank. Santo wants to revenge his uncle. I don’t see no way to stop him.”

“He ain’t Sicilian,” Carmine grunted. “What does he know about revenge?”

“That’s the whole point, Carmine. He
ain’t
Sicilian. Nobody’s gonna give him a job. Uncle Steppy was his only hope in life. His ticket to the big time. Now, he’s got nothin’.”

Dominick Favara handed his empty glass to Carmine. “Do that again.” He waited until his glass was full, then took a sip before speaking. “Santo Silesi’s got nothin’ on
us.
Ditto for the Jew. Let ’em kill each other off. It ain’t our business. What we gotta do is prepare in case the cops put the heat on. Now, I got an idea for the dope business. The way the bulls make themselves look good is by sweepin’ up the guys on the street, right? I’m talkin’ about the junkies and the dealers. Now, ask yaself why we gotta put Italian kids on streetcorners where the cops can get to ’em when there’s a thousand spics out there who’d suck our dicks for a chance to take the risk. Steppy did a smart thing when he hired them Jews. It didn’t work out, but it was a smart thing. What we gotta do is find the meanest street gang in the projects on Avenue D and teach ’em how to make money. Maybe our profits’ll go down at first, but if things work out the way I think, we could move on every project in the city.”

Favara raised his glass to Joe Faci. “Here’s to a healthy vacation, Joe. You’ll be home in six months. I guarantee it.” He turned to Carmine. “And here’s to the future, Carmine. As the nuns used to say: ‘The Lord works in mysterious ways.’ ”

“I
T WAS PRETTY AMAZING
, Sarge,” Moodrow said as he filled Allen Epstein’s mug with steaming coffee. “I come walking down the hall, thinkin’ about what I’m gonna do if the uniform gives me any trouble, when I see this old cop sleeping in a chair outside O’Malley’s door. I swear, Sarge, he looks like he’s been dead for twenty years, like somebody unwrapped the mummy and dressed him in a blue uniform. I don’t know how these guys hang on, but this one’s much too old to stay awake at night. So what I do is kick the chair out from under him, jab my shield in his face and start screaming about how he’s endangering the life of a witness and I’m gonna have his pension for a midnight snack. By the time I finish, he’s ready to polish my shoes with his tongue. He doesn’t even ask for my name. Meanwhile, O’Malley turns out to be sharp as a tack. The first thing he wants to know is why he’s being held prisoner.

“ ‘The filthy Brits have been abusing us for a thousand years. Tell me, now, copper, could it be I’ve come all the way to America only to arrive in Belfast? Do ya think maybe the captain had a wee bit of a nip and sailed himself a great circle back to Ireland?’

“What happened was the suits gave him a choice: sit in his apartment or be held as a material witness in the West Street jail.”

Epstein grunted. “They wanted him where they could find him.”

“Which makes sense from a police point of view, because O’Malley, in addition to being a witness to murder, also happens to be in this country illegally. According to him, the British are trying to nail him for a series of bombings and shootings in Belfast. I got his confidence by telling him about Pat Cohan and Steppy Accacio
before
I showed him Jake’s mug shot.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said, ‘Do ya know of the troubles in Ireland, laddie? Do ya know the history of the poor unfortunates in that sad land? Do ya know how the sons and daughters of old Ireland have been driven to awful deeds in the name of freedom?’ ”

“You’ve got the accent down pat, Stanley, but does it
have
to be word for word?”

Moodrow stirred a teaspoon of sugar into his coffee. He was feeling too good to take offense. One of the latents found in O’Neill’s office had matched Jake Leibowitz’s left index finger. Add that to O’Malley’s signed statement placing Jake in the hallway just after the O’Neill murders and it added up to a search warrant for Leibowitz’s last known address, his mother’s apartment, and an arrest warrant for Jake himself.

“What O’Malley’s gonna do is take it on the lam as soon as he figures a way to get out of there. He’d be gone already if the fire escape outside his window wasn’t hanging by a thread. Which means that we have to move fast. We’ve gotta get the DA’s office to pull O’Malley off the street before he takes a hike. Or before someone kills him. Maybe Maguire’ll help. I didn’t wanna ask him to come out in the open, but if O’Malley disappears, the case against Leibowitz is thinner than Olive Oyl’s butt.”

Epstein held up a hand. “What you said about me being a hero for
not
busting you? It turned out to be a hundred percent accurate. I told McElroy that I went to your apartment to ask you to surrender. I was afraid of what you might do if someone else showed up. Then you gave me Patero’s confession and the rest of the evidence. You said that you’d go to the papers if I tried to arrest you. What could I do? I’m only a sergeant. How could I make a decision like that? By the time I finished describing Patero’s confession, the captain was ready to give me a medal. McElroy guarantees that you will
not
be arrested before Leibowitz goes down. He
begged
me to help keep the lid on. You don’t need Maguire, Stanley. You can go to the DA’s people for whatever you want.”

Moodrow got up and walked over to the kitchen window. He pulled aside the curtain and looked down at the street below. It was six o’clock in the morning and he was anxious to get to work.

“Why did McElroy cave in so fast?”

“A couple of reasons. He kicked me out of his office at one point. Asked me to wait in the bullpen for a few minutes while he made some calls. I figure he phoned his rabbi, who has to be at
least
a deputy chief, and his rabbi ordered him to hold off. McElroy’s only forty-five. He’s a cinch to make inspector and he could go much higher. But not if he has a major scandal in his precinct. Think about it, Stanley. It’s the precinct commander’s job to keep things running smoothly. Business as usual is what it’s all about. If the papers get their hands on Patero’s confession, McElroy’s career is
over.
”

Moodrow watched the raindrops bounce off the sidewalk. The temperature was down in the thirties and the few pedestrians were hunched beneath umbrellas as they hustled toward the subway. Some were actually running.

“There’s a kid named Moretti in the DA’s office. He’s eager, real eager. I think I’m gonna use him for the warrants, Sarge. Make sure it’s done right. The judges don’t read the warrants before they sign them. It could be that Cohan has enough pull to get an ADA to blow the paperwork.”

“That’s stretching it, Stanley.”

“I just wanna be sure.” Moodrow dropped the curtain and walked back to the table. “Moretti comes in early to work on pending cases. I’ve gotta get to him before he goes to court. You wanna come along and keep an eye on me? Maybe they’ll make you commissioner.”

Santo Silesi was getting very tired of trailing Mama Leibowitz through the Essex Street Market. How could anyone, even a Jew, spend an hour choosing pickled tomatoes from a barrel? Why didn’t the pickle man shove one of those tomatoes up her gargantuan butt? What the hell could they be talking about?

When Mama Leibowitz shifted her attention to a tub of double-sours, Santo emitted a groan of genuine pain. If there was any other way to get into Jake Leibowitz’s apartment, any other way to trap his uncle’s killer, he’d take it in a hot flash. Except, of course, simply kicking the door down, the only other way he could think of. Santo’s hatred of Jake Leibowitz hadn’t quite driven him over the edge. Not yet. Not while Mama Leibowitz was available to
lead
him through that door.

“You are having the pain,
señor
?”

Santo glanced down at the shoe salesman kneeling at his feet. You had to feel sorry for the little greaseball. Six pair of shoes and no hope of a sale. Not at
Paolo’s Zapateria
with its two-dollar cardboard specials. The shoes were so goddamned pointy they looked more like deadly weapons than something you’d wear on your feet.

Puerto Rican Fence Climbers. That’s what everybody called them. The perfect size for a chain-link fence in your neighbor’s back yard.

“Don’t you have any
brown
shoes?” Santo asked. He looked at his own Florsheim wing tips sitting next to one of Paolo’s specials, two thoroughbreds next to a plow horse, and shook his head. Spics and sheenys—what had the world come to?

“This is disgusting,” he said.

“You no like the shoes,
señor
?”

“Too greasy,” Santo muttered, slipping his feet into his own shoes. The bitch was moving at last, sliding her blubber along the concrete floor. As she passed each stall, she shouted a greeting to the proprietor.

“Yoo-hoo, Solly, how’s by you today? How’s business?”

How’s your son? Your daughter? Your wife? Your grandchildren? How’s your heart? Your liver? Your second cousin’s hairy butt? How’s … Disgusting. But maybe not as disgusting as all the bullshit he’d taken from Jake Leibowitz. He could remember every episode. Word for word. The way Santo Silesi saw it, there were only two options and both of them spelled death. Death for Jake Leibowitz. Or death for Santo Silesi.

When Mama Leibowitz stopped at Moishe’s Kosher Poultry, Santo ducked into the first available stall: B&B Foundation Garments.

“You want maybe a girdle?”

Santo stared down at the old lady who’d asked the question. She couldn’t have been more than four feet tall and she was skinny as a rail. Meanwhile, there was no fear in her voice. None whatsoever.

“Sorry,” Santo said, “wrong sewer.” He crossed the aisle between stalls and began to sort through a tray of men’s wallets. Mama Leibowitz showed no sign of moving on. She was busy examining a live chicken in a little wooden cage. Santo wondered what she was looking for. The cage was so small, the animal could barely move. As he watched, the proprietor, a tall skinny man with an adam’s apple that bobbed up and down like a yo-yo, put the cage back and brought out another.

“This is a chicken?” Santo heard Mama Leibowitz cry out in disbelief. She sounded the way she would after he, Santo Silesi, blew the top of her son’s head off. “This chicken is so old it’s a
duck.
”

“Why should an old chicken be a duck?”

“Please, I didn’t come off the boat this minute. I want a chicken that’s a chicken for roasting, not a hen for stewing.”

“Maybe you’d like to come around the counter and pick one for yourself? Before I get a hernia from carrying the cages?”

“That would be fine.”

Santo watched the proprietor swing a section of the counter up. Even turned sideways, Mama Leibowitz could barely squeeze her fat gut through the opening. Then she was in the back, surrounded by squawking birds and the acrid stench of manure. The chickens, perhaps sensing her intentions, began to flutter in the cages, sending up a thick cloud of feathers that veiled her bulk.

Maybe she’ll disappear, Santo thought. Maybe she’ll pull a Houdini and vanish.

The chickens were squawking in near panic, but nobody in the market appeared to notice. It was everyday stuff to the shoppers and the shopkeepers. The chaos. The gossip. The dirty concrete floor and the ill-kept stalls piled with shoddy merchandise. All perfectly natural in this universe of sheenys and spics.

Well, the hell with it. The fat bitch didn’t know him from Adam. Santo walked right past her to the hot dog wagon near the Delancey Street entrance to the market and ordered two franks and a beer. Naturally, he didn’t get to finish the first frank, before she up and walked right past him.
Without
the chicken.

What I’m gonna do, Santo thought, as he imitated her slow-motion walk through the neighborhood, is make sure Jake looks me right in the eye before I kill him. He’s gotta know who’s pulling the trigger. Maybe I’ll gut-shoot him first. So I could watch him flop around until he begs me to finish him off.

Mama Leibowitz seemed to know everybody on the Lower East Side, calling out greetings to passersby as she waddled the four blocks to her apartment. It’d finally stopped raining and the housewives were out in force, so she had plenty of company. The five-minute stroll took almost an hour. She’d shuffle forward a few yards, her body swaying like a metronome as she tried to pick her feet off the sidewalk, then it would begin: “Sadie, how’s by you? Your husband’s arthritis, it’s better, maybe?” Santo thought he was going to go off his rocker.

Still, it wasn’t all bad. Despite the stops and starts, Mama Leibowitz never turned around, not once, not even when Santo followed her through the entrance to her building, when he practically clipped her heels as she hauled herself up three flights of stairs. Not even when he yanked out his .44 and came up directly behind her as she turned the key in the lock.

Santo slammed the revolver into Mama Leibowitz’s head with all the force at his command. He was
trying
to kill her. Actually
trying.
Not that there was time to check her out. He pushed her body through the door, then stepped across her blubbery butt as he swept the open space in front of him. He was standing in the living room. The kitchen was on his right. He could see most, but not all of it. On his left, a hallway led to the bedrooms.

He stepped out into the center of the living room, extending the revolver, holding it with both hands. The bitch fell without a sound, he reminded himself. There’s no rush. Jake
can’t
know you’re here. Do it slow and do it right. Because the very worst thing that could happen is to die knowing you let the Jew off the hook.