Piece of the Action (40 page)

The kitchen was empty. Santo crossed the living room, keeping his body close to the wall. The bathroom door at the far end of the apartment was open. It, too, was empty. Unless Jake was hiding in the tub. But Santo couldn’t worry about that. You couldn’t look in the closets until you covered the obvious places. Which meant the bedrooms, two
closed
doors on the left side of the hallway.

If I’m not afraid to die, Santo asked himself, then why am I sweating? Why’s my hand shaking? This isn’t the way it happens in the movies. It isn’t the way it happened with Izzy Stein, either. Izzy went out like a man. He was tough and he made it easy. What if Jake was behind one of those doors? What if he was kneeling behind the bed with a .45 aimed at the very space Santo Silesi was sure to occupy?

A moment followed in which there were
no
thoughts. A dead space, a lost chunk of time when the world simply didn’t exist. Wasn’t there a thing in the Bible about time standing still? Or the sun standing still? There were objects in front of Santo’s eyes, but he couldn’t see them, couldn’t focus. They were there and they weren’t there. Like ghosts in a movie.

I’m not cut out for this, Santo thought. I’m not a pro. And if I don’t get my act together, I never will be.

What he wanted to do was run from room to room, throwing open doors and closets, to scream Jake’s name, calling him out to a fair fight. There’s only room for one of us in this town, pardner. Come tomorrow at noon, that one is gonna be
me.

In the end, when the world was solid again, when chairs and tables were chairs and tables, when the sofa didn’t shimmer like a desert mirage, Santo took it very slowly. He tiptoed over to the first door and put his ear against the wood, reminding himself that Jake couldn’t know there was anyone else in the apartment. The fact that all he, Santo, could hear was dead silence, didn’t mean that Jake was inside with a .45 trained on the door.

Santo turned the knob carefully, almost rejoicing in its smooth motion, then pushed it open, careful to keep most of his body behind the frame. Still, his heart beat wildly as his eyes surveyed the empty room.

What I should’ve done, he thought, is wait somewhere for Jake to come to
me.
Because I can’t control this shit.

He scanned the room quickly. It was a woman’s room, Mama Leibowitz’s most likely. There was no one under the neatly made bed, he could see that much, but the closet door was closed. Jake could be in that closet, squatting down, a shotgun cradled in his arms. He could be just about to kick it open, to come out blasting …

Santo closed the bedroom door. He
had
to close it. To get to that other room before he drowned in fear. Quickly and quietly, he moved to the next door, laying his ear against it as he had with the first. The cool wood felt somehow comforting and his first thought was to leave his face there, to rest it against the door as he would against a woman’s breast. There was no sound on the other side.

Finally, as though he were under water and pushing against a tidal wave, Santo managed to turn the knob and shove the door open. The room was deserted.

He stepped inside, already beginning to feel like a cowardly fool. The closet door was mercifully open. A few suits and jackets hung inside, far too few to conceal Jake Leibowitz or anybody else. The truth, despite Santo’s racing pulse, was that Jake Leibowitz had flown the coop. He’d taken it on the lam, which, under the circumstances, was the only thing he
could
have done.

You’re a punk, Santo told himself, a miserable punk. And this don’t mean you’re off the hook, either. You
still
have to find the Jew and take care of him. Because if you don’t revenge Steppy, you’ll never be able to hold up your head in this town again. You might as well go out and buy yourself a lunchpail. You might as well get a
job.

Santo shoved the .44 down into the waistband of his trousers. A few minutes ago, he’d been hoping that Mama Leibowitz was dead. Now, he saw her as his ticket to Jake. Of course, he couldn’t be sure that she knew where Jake was hiding, but if she did, he, Santo Silesi, would find out.

“You’re maybe looking for somebody?”

Santo spun on his heel to find a bloody Mama Leibowitz standing right behind him. She was holding the biggest handgun Santo had ever seen, holding it right up to his face. It was a vision beyond even his worst nightmare. The blood streamed down over her bloated face. It dripped onto her ratty fur coat, matting the long hairs.

“Where’s your sword, you Cossack bastard? Where’s your horse?”

“Wha, wha, wha …”

“Ha, so you’re
plotzing,
already.” She grinned, showing a full set of small bloody teeth. “You brought, maybe, a change of underwear?”

“I, I, I … I don’t get it? I don’t …”

“Don’t worry about nothing, sonny. This you’re gonna get.”

The force of the slug blew Santo Silesi halfway across the room. It picked him up and tossed him backwards as carelessly as a superstitious housewife tossing spilled salt over her shoulder. Mama Leibowitz walked after him, holding the revolver in front of her, looking for any sign of life. She needn’t have bothered. The hole in Santo’s forehead was small and neat, but the back of his head was missing altogether.

“
Oy
,” Mama Leibowitz groaned, “what a mess.” She stepped over a small lump of wet gray brain and squatted next to Santo. Using just the tips of two fingers, she tugged at his .44 until it came free, then dropped it on the carpet next to his right hand. Finally satisfied, she walked back into the kitchen and called the police.

“P
ATIENCE, STANLEY,” ALLEN EPSTEIN SAID
, “like I taught you in the ring.”

“For Christ’s sake, Sarge, the prick’s spent half the morning bottled up in his room. Why can’t he see us for ten minutes?”

“Because the ‘
prick
’ happens to be a judge. Which means he doesn’t have to answer to a couple of flatfoots like us. His ‘
room
’, by the way, is called his chambers. Which oughta give you an even better idea of where we stand in relation to
him.
Besides, there were five hundred homicides in New York last year. What’s another killing to a big-time judge?”

“Three, Sarge,” Moodrow said. “Three killings to a big-time judge. Jake’s been a busy boy.”

“Four, if you wanna get technical. Don’t forget Steppy Accacio.”

Moodrow snorted. “
That
was in New Jersey. It doesn’t count.” They’d found out about Accacio’s murder accidentally. Epstein, with Moodrow’s permission, had called McElroy, filling the captain in on what they were doing and what they planned to do. McElroy had offered backup, been refused, then casually mentioned that Steppy Accacio had been gunned down in his New Jersey home. No, he had none of the details. It wasn’t the 7th Precinct’s business. “Besides,” Moodrow continued, “we don’t know if Jake pulled that one off. What I’m trying to be here is accurate. I’m trying to be fair to the Honorable Judge Marone, because the last thing I wanna do is show contempt for the court. I’m sure he got himself elected fair and square. Even if he
was
nominated by Tammany Hall and ran without opposition.”

They’d been sitting in a hallway of the Criminal Court Building on Centre Street for almost three hours. Tom Moretti, the ADA, had left the unsigned warrants with Judge Marone’s clerk before nine o’clock, then gone off to a trial in another part of the building. The judge’s signature, Moretti had insisted, was a mere formality. Now it was twelve o’clock and nearly time for the Honorable Judge Marone to go to lunch.

The plain truth was that Stanley Moodrow was afraid somebody, Santo Silesi or Joe Faci or Dominick Favara or Pat Cohan or Sal Patero or
somebody,
would get to Jake Leibowitz before he did. In fact, the idea terrified him. Not that he couldn’t see the justice in it. The very real possibility that Jake’s body would come floating up in the East River
had
to be seen as justice of a sort. Death was the ultimate penalty. A bullet or the electric chair—what difference did it make?

The difference was that it wouldn’t be
him.
It wouldn’t be Stanley Moodrow uttering the magic words:
You’re under arrest for the murder of Luis Melenguez.
That pronouncement belonged to him and he intended to speak it, even if he had to do it over Jake’s dead body. What was the point of hunting, of tracking your quarry down and bringing it to bay, if you had to turn over the rifle at the last minute?

And there was another point, too. McElroy and the rest of the brass might be cooperating, but it wasn’t because they’d suddenly gotten religion. Right now, they were afraid of Stanley Moodrow. Later on, when Jake Leibowitz, Pat Cohan and Sal Patero were as meaningless as yesterday’s news, there was every reason to believe the big shots would come for their revenge.

Pat Cohan had spelled it out best when he’d insisted that a cop’s first loyalty is to the Department, not to the Constitution of the United States or the New York State Penal Code. McElroy was protecting the Department’s fat butt. When that butt was no longer exposed, he (and the rest of the Department) would look for revenge. If, when the time came, Stanley Moodrow was the hero detective who’d arrested a quadruple murderer, it wouldn’t hurt his case at all.

Moodrow stood up and walked over to Marone’s office. “I’m goin’ inside and find out what’s happening. This is bullshit.”

“Don’t get crazy,” Epstein said brusquely. “You can’t put heat on a judge. If you try it, you’ll lose him for the future. Assuming you don’t intend to find another career, you’re gonna need judges like you’re gonna need stool pigeons. There’s no way to work without ’em.”

But Judge Marone didn’t get sore when Moodrow barged into his chambers. He was apologetic.

“I’m sorry, Detective,” he said, tapping his desk with a nervous forefinger, “I forgot all about it. I’m sentencing a convicted murderer tomorrow and I’ve got to decide whether he lives or dies. My problem is that I don’t believe the death penalty has any effect on crime. If I had my way, I’d
never
send a man to his death no matter what he did. But there’s the question of the law. I’m
obliged
to submit to the will of the legislature. The legislature is
obliged
to submit to the will of the people. If the people
want
the death penalty—and they most assuredly do, they yearn for it like vampires yearn for blood—who am I to oppose them?”

“And don’t forget,” Moodrow said brightly, “you’re gonna have to go
back
to those vampires when you run for reelection.”

Marone, much to Moodrow’s surprise, laughed out loud. “Yes, there’s that, too,” he said. “That, too. But it doesn’t matter, really. What matters is that I have to read one hundred and seventy-two letters from ‘concerned citizens’ before I pass sentence. So far, half of them are demanding that I let the kid off with life. That’s what he is, by the way, a seventeen-year-old, semi-retarded, Puerto Rican
kid.
The other half want to fry
me
if I don’t give him the chair. What happened to you is that you got lost in the shuffle. I apologize.”

Moodrow watched the judge flip through the papers on his desk until he found the two sheets he was looking for. He scanned them quickly before scrawling his signature on the bottom. The whole process took thirty seconds.

“Thanks, Your Honor,” Moodrow said, repressing a smile.

“Just doing my job, son. Don’t forget, you’re a voter, too. Come back whenever you need me.”

Fifteen minutes later, Moodrow and Epstein were sitting in front of Jake Leibowitz’s last known address. Or, rather, they were sitting half a block away which was as close as they could get. The rest of the block was packed with police cruisers and unmarked detectives’ cars.

“It doesn’t
have
to be related,” Moodrow groaned. “But why do I know it
is
?”

“Cheer up, Stanley. If it’s Jake Leibowitz, it’s all over.”

Moodrow looked at Epstein. “More likely it’s the poor cop who came to arrest him.”

But there was no point in speculating. Both men got out of the car and walked the half block to Jake’s building. A knot of detectives and uniformed patrolman stood outside, Detective Lieutenant Michael Rosten among them. Moodrow, smiling now, flashed his badge.

“Detective Moodrow,” he announced.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rosten said, moving away from the pack. His expression was neutral, without a hint of the anger Moodrow assumed he must be feeling.

“Somebody get to Jake Leibowitz?” Moodrow ignored the question.

Rosten took his time before answering. His eyes remained blank as he recited the facts. “We’ve got an unidentified DOA in apartment 5C. We’ve got a fifty-five-year-old female perpetrator, one Sarah Leibowitz, who claims she killed the victim in self-defense. The perpetrator suffered a severe head injury, possibly at the hands of the DOA, and has been transported to Bellevue Hospital.”

“
Transported?
That’s a good one.”

“Stanley, can I talk to you a minute?” Epstein pulled Moodrow to one side. He was smiling, but his voice was as sharp as a razor. “Listen, you asshole, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t flush
my
career down the toilet along with your own. You think you’re gonna get any closer to Jake Leibowitz by insulting a lieutenant? Maybe you took too many shots to the head and you’re losin’ it.”

“Look, Sarge, this
lieutenant
wanted to put me in jail. Remember? And he was willing to sign a false affidavit to do it. You expect me to kiss his ass?”

“Yeah, that sounds about right. In fact, that’s
exactly
what I expect. And if you think it’s too much for you, tell me right now. So I can walk away before I end up directing traffic in the Midtown Tunnel.”

“Sarge …”

“I’m not joking, Stanley.” Epstein’s voice was much softer, but no less determined. “Right now, thanks to you, I’m a hero. I’m a neutral go-between, keeping you in line while protecting the Department’s interests. If Rosten or McElroy come to the conclusion that I’ve taken sides, the black mark’ll follow me for the next twenty years. Which is how long I expect to stick around.”