Forced Entry (12 page)

“You been living here awhile, Patrick?” Moodrow asked.

“I been here more than two years,
Stanley
,” Sheehan replied. “And I’m willing to talk, if you came here to help out Sylvia Kaufman. But not if you came here to break my balls. Bustin’ me was one thing. Hasslin’ me is another. I’m fuckin’ clean and I plan to stay that way.”

As soon as Moodrow understood that Pat Sheehan and Louis Persio had been in residence for more than two years, he dismissed them as part of Sylvia Kaufman’s problem. Moodrow had known Pat Sheehan when Sheehan was just another junkie rampaging through the Lower East Side, had arrested him and testified at his trial. Sheehan was not a junkie anymore. He was much too healthy for that. But he would know who was operating in the building. He would see his fellow tenants with eyes as discerning as Moodrow’s.

“I’m here because Sylvia Kaufman is my girlfriend’s aunt,” Moodrow explained. “Like I said, I’m retired, but I do private jobs. The other night, I’m laying in the bed with Betty and she starts telling me about her aunt who lives in Queens. Would I go and help her out. Hey, when you’re retired, you don’t have nothing but time, right? Anyway, to make a long story short, all I really know is there was a sexual assault here a few days ago and there’s whores and drugs in the building. Where I come from, that ain’t much to complain about, but like I said, it’s a favor.”

Pat Sheehan, the only one still standing, strolled across to the refrigerator and opened two cans of Coors, handing one to Moodrow, before he took his seat. “So whatta ya want from me?” he asked. There was no resentment in his voice.

“I wanna know what the fuck is going on,” Moodrow answered. “And I’m not gonna find out by asking the asshole cop who showed up tonight. That fat fuck only knows from bullshit. That’s his job. Bullshit.”

“You think the other one is better? The one from the landlord?” Sheehan, who’d passed Porky Dunlap on his way out of the church, was openly skeptical.

Moodrow shrugged. “At least what he said makes sense for the building.”

Pat Sheehan leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. “Maybe you lost your cop brains since you retired, Moodrow, but that scumbag is layin’ down a carpet of shit deeper than the one in Donald Trump’s living room.”

“So he’s bullshittin’, so what could you expect from a landlord? I don’t wanna waste my time with him. I need to know what’s going on inside the building.”

“Whatever you want, Moodrow.” Pat Sheehan pulled on his beer and looked across at Louis Persio who was following the conversation closely. He waited for Persio to give a slight nod before he proceeded. “At first there was just the mailboxes and the locks on the front door. They went out about a month ago. Then this pimp sets up two pigs in an apartment on the first floor. The pimp, by the way, is an oily fuck that’s so oily no one could rent to him without knowing what he was. Next thing, the whores are givin’ blow-jobs in the hallway and comin’ on to the tenants. Now you got two dopers set up in the apartment right across the hall from me. They must’ve made me for a junkie, because they did everything but jab the fuckin’ spike into my arm. Right now they’re dealing dope and crack to a few steady customers, but they told me they were gonna open up the whole neighborhood to the glories of cocaine.”

“And there’s only two of them?” Moodrow asked.

“Two that I know of, but there’s a lot of vacant apartments. That sweet landlord you like so fuckin’ much’s been dumpin’ out the Asians and the illegals as fast as he can check the leases. With that many empties, there’s gonna be squatters. Might be already, but I ain’t seen ’em.”

“What about the rape? What’s that all about?”

“A burglary,” Sheehan explained. “Dude’s takin’ off the apartment when the old lady comes home. Maybe she surprised him or maybe he was too stoned to run. Either way, he belted her out and then took advantage.”

“With the kid watching,” Moodrow added.

“Yeah,” Sheehan agreed, “with the kid lookin’. But it don’t figure to connect with the whores and the dope. Jackson Heights ain’t got much street crime, but it does have burglaries. People here got money and that makes them prey for the people who don’t. So what’s new?”

Suddenly, Moodrow, his course of action firmly established in his own mind, stood up and prepared to leave. “Okay, Pat. I’m gonna go see if I can head this off before it turns into an epidemic.”

“Is that a joke?” Louis Persio spoke for the first time.

“What?” Moodrow asked, confused.

“About the epidemic?”

“You’re too sensitive,” Moodrow replied. “If you think I got a problem with you or your condition, you’re mistaken. The only problem I got is with my girlfriend and this building.” He hesitated momentarily, measuring his thoughts. “See, I have this deep conviction that if I don’t save these poor, helpless tenants, who just happen to be going through what half the people in this city live with every fucking day, my old lady is gonna walk away from me and I like her too much to take a chance.”

“I want you to do us a favor,” Persio continued, ignoring Moodrow’s reply. “Do us a big favor and we’ll be your eyes and ears. We’ll be rats.” He began to cough, his emaciated body seeming to ripple beneath the green plaid blanket covering him. Sheehan rushed over to help, but Persio shook him off. “I waited a long time in my life to become a rat,” he said.

“Why don’t you just tell me what you want,” Moodrow said neutrally. The idea of a trade-off appealed to his cop sensibility.

“If Pat’s parole officer thinks we’re part of what’s going down here, he’ll break us up. At the least. Convicts on parole aren’t supposed to room with convicted felons. Even if the convicted felon is dying. Even if they’re in love.” He stopped abruptly, trying to read something in Moodrow’s blank face, then settled for the neutrality. “Talk to the parole officer. Tell him we’re childhood sweethearts. Tell him we’re Christian fundamentalists who got saved in the joint. Because we can’t move. There’s nobody who’d take me, even if we could afford another apartment, and I’m not too keen on doing the hospice bit while I can still make it at home.”

“I
’M SORRY WE DIDN’T
get a chance to talk before the meeting,” Sylvia said. Though she didn’t particularly like Betty Haluka’s new boyfriend (he was too deliberately inscrutable), Betty had—for one brief summer while her mother was ill—become a second child, and so, for Betty’s sake, Sylvia was polite.

“No big deal,” Moodrow said, his eyes glued to the corner connecting the hallway to the lobby. “You had your hands full.”

“You used to be a police officer?”

“Yeah. Thirty-five years. Made it up to the detectives. Say, do me a favor, Sylvia. Move a little bit to the right so’s I could watch the lobby. I’m waiting for someone.”

Sylvia looked at him closely. It was almost eleven o’clock and the rest of the tenants—the ones who’d attended the meeting, anyway—were safely inside their apartments. So who was he waiting for?

When it became apparent that Moodrow wasn’t about to volunteer the information, Sylvia changed her tactics. “What did you think of Sergeant Dunlap?” she asked. “Do you think he can help us?”

“Forget about him,” Moodrow said evenly. “He’s a
shmuck
. That’s why they made him Community Affairs Officer.”

“I don’t understand?”

“Community Affairs is a public relations post. It don’t have anything to do with the job. The only help Dunlap could give is persuading the captain to assign a few anticrime guys to work the building. And that’s not too likely, because the problem isn’t bad enough. Not when you look at what’s going on in South Jamaica or the Bronx. Maybe if you put together a strong tenants’ association, you could persuade one of the real cops to help you. The tenants’ patrol is a very good idea. Just be careful who you pick, because mostly they come around for a few shifts and then get bored. Stay at home and watch the football game.” Moodrow, though he noticed the crestfallen look on Sylvia Kaufman’s face when he told her about Dunlap, recited his speech matter-of-factly. Better she should know the truth. He was a great believer in truth. “And try to get that pastor at that church you were in tonight to call the precinct; he probably knows the captain by his first name. The precinct commander at the One One Five, by the way, is George Serrano. He’s Catholic and he’ll most likely be influenced by the priest.”

“And Rosenkrantz?” Sylvia persisted. “Is he worthless, too?”

“Nobody’s worthless,” Moodrow explained. “But you gotta know who’s gonna help if it gets bad and you could
never
count on the Community Affairs Officer. You can’t count on the landlord, either, but what Rosenkrantz says will most likely get the building back together. If only because Rosenkrantz has an interest in keeping the place up. I had a talk with Pat Sheehan before I came down here…”

“You don’t think Pat is part of this?”

“Actually, I don’t. But he knows what’s going on. He told me about the whores and he says there’s a couple of guys dealing dope in the apartment across the hall from him. Which is what I figure the problem is all about. Crack is so addicting, the dealers feel they can make any neighborhood into a supermarket if they can find a few locals to sample the goods. There’s always been drugs in the bars on Roosevelt Avenue. Coke and speed, mostly. A little dope. Now it’s moved over a couple of blocks.”

“Does that mean you think it can be taken care of?”

Moodrow shifted his glance just enough to look at Sylvia. The lady was very tired, that was obvious, and he was tempted to reassure her the way parents reassure their children after nightmares. “Look, Sylvia, I don’t have no psychic powers and I left my crystal ball at home, so you shouldn’t take what I say like it comes from the Pope. But I got every reason to think this situation could be taken care of. That’s what I’m doing here. I’m waiting to have a little talk with a Chinese kid named Joey Yang who lives in 4B. I think I might be able to persuade him to move out.”

“How are you going to do that?” Sylvia smiled. “If you left your crystal ball at home, that probably means you forgot your magic wand, as well.”

“Betty said you were a schoolteacher before you retired. When I was in fourth grade, Mrs. Benedict always used to say, ‘Stanley, you’d forget your ears if they weren’t attached to your head.’ ”

Relief began to seep into Sylvia Kaufman, like the warmth of a hot bath after an afternoon shoveling snow. Moodrow was a physical monster; if he didn’t reek of cop, he’d be terrifying. But there was confidence to go with the bulk; if he believed…

“I think there might be a problem when Yang shows up,” Moodrow said. “It’d be better if you went inside. Just in case.”

“Maybe I could be of some help…”

Moodrow laughed. “How about sending me the little guy who asked that I should be thrown out of the meeting? To give me a hand if Yang decides to get tough.”

“Mike Birnbaum?”

“Wait a second.” Moodrow stiffened as soon as he heard the sharp clank of the lobby door closing. “Go into your apartment,” he ordered. “Right now.”

He actually pushed her, though he was gentle, and Sylvia began to move down the hallway, fumbling for her keys. She had every intention of following his instructions, but her curiosity overcame her fear before she found the key chain and she looked back to see a small Oriental in a blue pea coat walk from the lobby into the corridor. The look of near panic that came over his face when he saw Moodrow standing in his path was so comical, she forgot Moodrow’s order altogether.

“Hello, Joey,” Moodrow said. It was too late to worry about Sylvia; the first rule of survival in a gun-mad city is to keep the suspect in plain view at all times. Pat Sheehan had described Joey Yang and while there might be more than one short, slim Oriental living in the building, Yang’s expression upon sighting Moodrow made it unlikely that he was the victim of mistaken identity. Still, Moodrow called him by his first name and when Yang made no protest, Moodrow took the identification as confirmed.

“Don’t put your hands in your pockets, Joey. In fact, don’t move your fucking hands at all.” Moodrow, speaking very softly (but with his own jacket unbuttoned to make the presence of his. 38 more than obvious), walked quickly toward the much smaller Joey Yang, who stood frozen for a second, his narrow eyes widening with unexpected terror, before spinning and running for the door. Moodrow, anticipating the flight (and much too slow to catch the hundred and thirty pound Joey Yang) tossed his overcoat into the backs of Yang’s legs, a move designed merely to slow Yang down, but which tripped him, instead. By the time Yang got to his knees, Moodrow was standing over him, smiling.

“Lemme help you up, Joey.” Moodrow picked the kneeling Yang off the ground by the back of his coat and shoved him against the wall. Curiously, Moodrow was nearly as convinced of his own “cophood” as Joey Yang, who didn’t doubt that he was about to be arrested for a second. “You don’t have a gun in there, Joey. You ain’t carrying no gun, I hope. How come your hands ain’t against the wall? What the fuck’s the matter with you? That’s better. For a second I thought you was gonna tell me you never been busted before and I wouldn’t like it if you told me lies.”

Moodrow’s right hand was darting in and out of Joey Yang’s pockets like the head of an exploring python. Dipping, searching, pulling back. He found the gun Pat had warned him about in the waistband of Yang’s trousers, but that was the least of it. In a plastic sandwich bag taped to the small man’s thigh, Moodrow discovered thirty bundles of heroin. Three thousand dollars, retail, the following day’s supply for Yang’s slowly expanding operation.

“This is really bad for you, Joey,” Moodrow continued. “ ’Cause you got a gun on you which is an automatic year, even if you don’t have no priors, which I think you got. Also, they changed the dope laws now, so this much smack is a B felony unless you rat your people out. Which, even if you do rat, you still gotta do
some
time. This kinda weight and the judge don’t have discretion.”

Moodrow stuffed the heroin into the pocket of his jacket and the gun (a piece-of-shit. 22 that was sixty percent likely to misfire) in his overcoat pocket where it wouldn’t be a temptation for Joey Yang, who was in the process of collecting himself.