Forced Entry Read online

  Forced Entry

  A Stanley Moodrow Crime Novel

  Stephen Solomita

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Special thanks to Harriet Smith and Jack Finn who taught me about the tenant-landlord wars played out in New York over the last ten years. Thanks also to Jim Silvers, who taught me something about towers and taxes. And to Eddie Sedarbaum and Howie Cruse who showed me the sights in Jackson Heights.

  THIS BOOK IS FOR MY FATHER

  This is a work of fiction. Despite the existence of a real Jackson Heights and the well-documented greed of New York slumlords. Example: there is no Jackson Arms in Jackson Heights and no apartment building at the corner of 37th Avenue and 75th Street. A word to the wiseguy.

  PROLOGUE

  October 11

  MAREK NAJOWSKI, CASUALLY ELEGANT in a cashmere sweater and wool-flannel trousers, ran his short, square fingers through his blond hair, then stepped out onto the balcony of his Brooklyn Heights co-op, fully expecting the view, as it always did, to calm him. To ground him and return him to his goal.

  He swept his eyes across the black, choppy waters of the East River, stopping to caress the monuments, Governors Island to the south and the Brooklyn Bridge to the north, which framed his view of southern Manhattan. It was cold for New York in October (though he felt entirely comfortable in his thin sweater), and a brisk wind had blown the smog out to sea, scrubbing the air between the skyscrapers the way his mother had scrubbed the corners of their first apartment in Flatbush.

  Marek had come a long way from Flatbush, a long way from the heap. He could allow himself to gaze at the towers of lower Manhattan that defined his dream without feeling utterly insignificant. The developers had taken the land along the waterfront and transformed it, erecting black glass towers so high they dwarfed the older stone buildings, hiding many of them altogether.

  But not the Woolworth Building. Unmistakable, with its pale-green facade, it looked, to Marek Najowski, like an old lady fresh from the beauty parlor. Or, better yet, from the plastic surgeon, her brazenly displayed jewelry calling attention to the face-lift, the breast-lift, the blue eyes shifted just slightly to green by tinted contacts (and, thus, perfectly matching the emeralds at her unlined throat).

  “Hey, Mikey.” Marek Najowski always called himself by the nickname his mother had given him, in defiance of her old-world Polish husband. “Mikey, you ready yet?”

  “Not yet, sir,” he promptly answered.

  Like a weight lifter pumping curl after curl, he began to recite the list of waterfront towers: Wall Street Plaza; Liberty Plaza; New York Plaza; State Street Plaza; Battery Park Plaza. Each a separate building devoted to the practical needs of the financial world; each with a personal address dedicated to the power of money.

  Marek, calmer now, shook his head in wonder. The Donald Trumps and Harry Macklowes, who’d gotten in on the ground floor of the fifteen-year building boom (which had wound down abruptly in 1989), had made billions. With the help of politicians willing to cut almost any deal to keep the big Wall Street houses from moving across the Hudson, they’d literally transformed the profile of lower Manhattan, especially on the west side of the island, where the World Financial Center, flanked by a community of 17,000 people, stood on a pile of landfill so new that some of the road maps printed in the early part of the decade showed only the Hudson River.

  Marek Najowski had been a young man when it’d started, a college graduate working his old man’s plumbing supply business in Greenpoint, but he’d gone into real estate about the same time, buying up three-and four-family homes in Hackensack and Jersey City, then renovating and reselling, usually for a profit. In his own mind, he was every bit the intellectual equal of the Zeckendorfs and the Kalikows. Having anticipated the explosive development of the Jersey waterfront with a precision that shocked even him, he was convinced that if he’d begun with enough capital…

  Well, he mused, no sense in dwelling on the past. He wasn’t dead yet, though middle age was adding to the strain of what he had to do. Sweeping the skyline one more time, he allowed the sharp blaze of fluorescent light to pierce the fabric of his dreams before he turned back to the interior of his apartment. He always found the quantum leap from the magnificence of Manhattan’s financial district to the reality of his two-bedroom apartment depressing, a reminder of how far he had to go before he managed to heave himself to the top of Manhattan Mountain. Not that he wouldn’t make it. Not that his $450,000 Brooklyn Heights coop (with, he firmly believed, the best view to be found below Central Park South) wouldn’t be enough to impress the other side of the deal he had to make tonight.

  Marek glanced at the small brass clock on the mantel. A quarter after eight. Fifteen minutes until D Day. Marek had been waiting for this moment for twenty years, for the day when he’d clinch the big deal that would jump him from a small-time New York asshole into a bona fide player (though not in the league where the Kalikows played; not in this life). Of course, in his fantasies, the big deal had always been consummated in the immaculately groomed inner sanctum of one of the investment bankers who maintained offices throughout the financial district. But none of those silver-haired, silver-tongued demons would give him the time of day. And none would have the balls to cut the kind of deal he was determined to land.

  He looked up at the clock again. Eight twenty-five. Time for his game face. He walked quickly into the bedroom and stood in front of the full-length mirror, carefully checking his appearance. At six foot two, trim and athletic (“Body and mind,” his old man had explained), his build denied his forty years. His blond, wiry hair was as thick as a boy’s and lighter than his father’s. Even his face, with its heavy bones and small, even features, was smooth and untroubled. Only a few lines (crow’s feet? laugh lines? he couldn’t remember the proper term) from the corners of narrow, Slavic eyes that glowed a fierce, brilliant green. Without benefit, he noted, of contacts.

  “Play it like one of the boys, Mikey,” he told his reflection. “Be the man who’s coming to make the big deal of the day. The big deal of your goddamned life.”

  The bell rang precisely at eight thirty, followed by the sharp crack of a brass knocker against solid oak, and Marek Najowski, adding a bounce to his walk and a smile to his lips, went to greet his guest.

  But, despite his earlier request, he found three men instead of the one he’d been expecting. No surprise, though, considering the caliber of the man with whom he was dealing. The short, thick, walleyed man, with the habit of shifting his unblinking stare from eye to eye, had been born Martin Ryan, but was known universally as Martin Blanks,
a name derived from an incident that had taken place when he had been eight years old. In a rage after a fatherly beating, he’d waited for his dad to go to sleep, then taken the family .38 from its hiding place and pulled the trigger three times.

  Unfortunately, the unloaded gun had made a series of impotent clicks just loud enough to awaken Martin’s dad. Which, of course, drew another beating, this one bad enough to require surgery and the attention of the police who had passed Martin over to the Bureau of Child Welfare and, eventually, a series of foster homes and group institutions. What with being raped, raping, and dodging rape, it had been ten years before Martin had been able to go back home and put a bullet in his father’s head. He had been eighteen at the time, just old enough to qualify for an adult prison, Clinton, where he was strong enough, finally, to avoid rape by confronting prospective rapists. And to stop committing rape. And even, sometimes, to prevent rape by taking young “chickens” under his wing.

  Thus, the ten years he spent behind the walls of the Clinton Correctional Facility passed without major incident and he emerged from prison with enough connections to assemble a gang of ex-cons and become a major player in the blossoming cocaine trade on the old sod—Hell’s Kitchen (the politicians liked to call it Clinton, an irony that did not elude Martin Blanks) which included everything west of Times Square, from 34th to 57th streets.

  Marek Najowski nodded to the impassive Martin Blanks and stepped back to allow him and his cohorts to enter. “I thought you were coming alone,” he admonished.

  “I lied,” Martin Blanks answered. Without being commanded, his men fanned out to look through the apartment. To look for anything that might endanger Martin Blanks, whose paranoia, honed in the city’s juvenile system, was legendary.

  “Look, Marty, I kind of expected you’d bring company. It only makes sense.

  “But some things in life you have to be alone for. Some things don’t work with more than two people. Am I right, or what? So do me a favor, once you satisfy yourself, send them home and we could talk in private. Please.”

  Martin Blanks said nothing, patiently waiting for his men to finish. He took in his host’s cashmere sweater, the wool-flannel trousers, the Bally loafers, even the two thin gold chains, one with a crucifix, hanging outside the sweater. Blanks had been turned on to Najowski by a neighborhood lawyer named O’Brien. O’Brien was a child of Hell’s Kitchen. He’d gotten an education, but hadn’t run away to Westchester or Connecticut. He’d stayed to defend and advise his boyhood chums, one of whom had been Marty Blanks.

  “Nothin’.” Stevey Powell, followed by his baby brother, Mikey, both ex-heavyweights, emerged from the kitchen to await further instructions.

  “Go back to the house,” Martin Blanks ordered curtly. “You know which one I’m talkin’ about. I’ll be back when I’m back.”

  “Should we take the car?”

  “Yeah. Mr. Najowski wouldn’t mind drivin’ me home. Ain’t that right?”

  Marek Najowski, his grin jumping into place as if Martin Blanks had flipped a switch, nodded eagerly. Every instinct told him not to confront his guest. To let Martin Blanks enjoy his cocky attitude. “No problem. I was hoping we could go for a little drive, myself. Something I wanna show you in Queens.” He waited patiently until they were alone, then offered Blanks a snifter of brandy.

  “Bring the bottle in the car,” Martin Blanks replied shortly. “I’m runnin’ close tonight. I gotta be in the city by eleven the latest. Time’s money, right?”

  Still grinning, Marek Najowski passed the bottle of Paul Remy over to Martin Blanks, who wasted no time in sampling the contents while Marek slid into a wool jacket, an Ungaro houndstooth check which made no more impression on Martin Blanks than the cognac or the fire.

  Ten minutes later, as they drove up Montague Street in Marek’s white Jaguar sedan, Marek turned to Marty Blanks and began his pitch, playing the part of the engaging rogue with complete confidence.

  “Tell me somethin’, Marty,” he said. “When is money not money?”

  “Don’t call me ‘Marty,’ ” Martin Blanks responded shortly.

  “Am I offending you?” The Jaguar accelerated effortlessly. Without a sound. “Because you’re the last guy I want to offend. Hey, I’m the same as you. I grew up in Flatbush. I went to school with the nuns. I made my First Communion at St. Bernadette’s, for Christ’s sake.”

  Marek began to weave the Jaguar in and out of the trucks and cars, pushing it just a little faster than the traffic allowed, talking quietly. “So what should I call you?”

  “Martin,” Martin Blanks replied evenly.

  “Is that what your friends call you?” Marek asked innocently. He was looking for the answer he got. Expecting it.

  “No.”

  Marek laughed, shaking his head ruefully. “Whatever you want, Martin. Ya gotta go with the flow. Am I right, or what? You could call me Marek. I used to go by my mother’s nickname for me—she was Irish, by the way—Mikey. I even had my name changed legally when I was about twenty-five. Changed it to Michael Najowski. Then, last year, I changed it back to Marek. You can’t run away from what you really are. In more ways than one.” He paused to thump on the leather armrest between Blanks and himself.

  “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Blanks answered, his eyes straight ahead as the Jaguar slowed down to creep past a stalled Buick.

  Marek Najowski didn’t reply for a moment, concentrating on the traffic as he maneuvered the Jaguar up the Tillary Street ramp and onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. “Tell me something,” he finally said. “Were you in Hell’s Kitchen before the Puerto Ricans took it over?” He knew, of course, that Martin Blanks had been taken from his family (and his neighborhood) before he was old enough to go out on the street, but the question was purely rhetorical. “Me, I grew up in Flatbush. On East 28th Street off Clarendon Road. Up until I was ten, it was all white. Italians, Irish, Poles, Germans. I’m talkin’ about working people, Martin. Cops, firemen, plumbers. Come Sunday morning, St. Bernadette’s ran six masses and every one of them was packed. All the kids I knew went to Catholic school. Maybe it wasn’t paradise, but it worked. People took care of each other. They took care of the apartments where they lived. They took care of the neighborhood. Am I right, or what?”

  Despite his original intentions, Marek Najowski was unable to keep the anger out of his voice. But he’d caught Martin Blanks’ attention. The Irishman was looking at him with curiosity, waiting for the end of the story.

  “Then the scum started moving in,” Najowski resumed.

  “This I already figured.” Martin Blanks grinned for the first time.

  “They came down from Atlantic Avenue. First to Eastern Parkway, then Empire Boulevard, then Linden Boulevard. Only a few, in the beginning. I remember the nuns telling us to get along. ‘They’re your brothers and sisters in God.’ And the politicians coming across with the same bullshit.

  “Well, the nuns stayed locked up in the convent and the politicians didn’t live anywheres near Flatbush. They didn’t come home to find them pissing in the hallways. They didn’t see the scum throw bags of garbage out the window ’cause they were too lazy to carry their crap down the stairs. My father came to America after the war. He was raised up tough and he tried to get my mother to move out. Meanwhile, she’s tellin’ him to show ‘Christian charity.’ Well, here’s what Christian charity means to the scum. One day, my mom was coming home from shopping. Three o’clock in the afternoon. As she’s walking up the steps to our apartment—to her home—two of them come up to her. One grabs her pocket-book. No trouble, right. She gives it up, but the other one still gotta hit her. Gotta punch her in the mouth so she falls backward down the stairs. Know what, Martin? My mom’s still alive. She don’t know me, of course. She don’t know nothin’, but tubes and diapers.”

  “And, nat’rally, you blame it on the blacks.”

  Najowski shook his head. “You don’t understand. No matter what society you pick—I don
’t care if it’s all white or all black or what it is—there’s a heap at the bottom. It’s boiling. Literally boiling. Like bees crawling over each other in the nest. You could go to Sweden where they’re whiter than white or Uganda where they’re so black, they’re invisible. Everybody wants to get out of the heap. It’s just natural to want to rise up. But how many do it? How many rise up and how many stay on the bottom? My mother struggled all her life, only to get destroyed by an insect from the very bottom of the heap. That’s not gonna be my fate, Marty. I already came too far for that.”

  They drove in silence while Marek Najowski allowed his heart to slow down. Allowed the red curtain in front of his eyes slowly to peel away. Finally, when he was ready to resume the persona he’d set for himself earlier in the evening, he spoke again.

  “So tell me,” he said, “when is money not money?”

  “I give up.” Even Martin Blanks, who’d seen violence in all its forms, from gang rape to cold-blooded murder, didn’t have the heart to stop Najowski.

  “When it’s in a suitcase under a bed. Then it’s a pile of shit. Am I right, or what?”

  “I don’t get the point,” Blanks replied. Suddenly, he didn’t like where the conversation was going.

  “You could make millions in the drug business and what does it get you? I mean how long before you get busted? Or until some rival burns you for your connections? A year? Two years? Five years? Next time you go upstate, you won’t come back until you’re an old man. Not only that, but they’ll take all your money. These days, when you get busted, they seize every dime and when you come out of jail, you’re just another asshole on welfare. See, Martin Blanks, right now all you have is a penniless future in an upstate jail.” Najowski flashed Blanks his most winning smile. “Am I right, or what?”