A Twist of the Knife Page 7

  Moodrow polished off his beer, tossing the empty bottle into the wastebasket. “Listen, Captain, I think I know who blew Chadwick away.” He stopped briefly, acutely aware of having said more than he wanted to. “I interviewed thirteen people besides Paco and the story’s the same everywhere. Understand? No disagreement on the particulars?”

  Epstein nodded, signaling Moodrow to continue.

  “There’s this guy they call Zorba the Freak. Real name is Johnny Katanos. A Greek. Three months ago, Katanos got introduced to the scene by a small-time dealer named Jason Peters. Right away, he makes friends with little Enrique. They get closer than close. Like maybe even fags. Then one day Chadwick get ripped off and, just like that, Enrique disappears along with this Greek. You remember Ortiz? The little one with the tattoo on his back? He did a lot of business with Zorba, said he knew the guy couldn’t be a cop because he was too cold. He says the only person Zorba ever spoke nice to was Enrique Hentados. Ortiz also thinks maybe they were getting it on together. I gotta say it, Captain. I ran down every one of Enrique’s friends and relatives. They’re all accounted for. Except this Greek.”

  Epstein pushed his chair away from his desk and got up to get Moodrow another beer. “You know, Stanley. I was hopin’ this crap would go away.”

  “Now you sound like Agent Higgins. I hope you didn’t mean all that shit you told the rookie.”

  “No, no.” He pried the top off and passed the bottle over to Moodrow. “Of course not. I know it’s only good when it’s personal, Stanley. I been a cop for a long time. Like you. But this isn’t personal. Some criminal got blown away. So what? You wanna spend the next six months tracking this Greek down?”

  “But I could do it,” the sergeant replied calmly. “You give me enough time and I’ll find him.”

  “If he’s still in New York?”

  “He’s here all right.”

  Epstein nodded in agreement. “Why argue?” he said. “He’s not in the Seventh. We agree on that, too. Now here’s the clincher. The fucking Jewish Defense League is threatening to set up patrols on Grand Street if we don’t stop the attacks. You wanna see those assholes down here? Remember Crown Heights? We could have a goddamn war.”

  Moodrow dropped the empty beer bottle into the wastebasket where it clinked softly against his first. He knew that Epstein was correct. He, Moodrow, could probably prevent further trouble between the Jews and the Puerto Ricans. The 7th precinct was his world. He’d never lived anywhere else. This was the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a neighborhood that never was. It stretched from 14th Street on the north to the Brooklyn Bridge on the south. Third Avenue and the Bowery separated it from Greenwich Village, while the East River formed its final boundary. Unlike the slums of Harlem or Bedford Stuyvesant, it had never been a “good” neighborhood. Most of its tenements, substandard from the first, were built between 1880 and 1915 to house the millions of immigrants pouring in from Eastern Europe. Czechs, Ukrainians, Poles, Latvians, Russians and 1.25 million Jews jammed into the 7th Precinct, until the streets exploded with humanity. Prosperity came slowly, but by the end of World War II, most of the immigrants had died or moved out to Long Island or New Jersey, leaving the Lower East Side to the Puerto Ricans who entered, not as aliens, but as full American citizens, only to discover that the living conditions, far from improving with age, had deteriorated so badly that some of the buildings—the top floors burned away by arsonists—seemed more like caves than homes. Rents, rigidly controlled by law, had fallen below the level necessary to produce a profit and rather than pay the taxes, many landlords had abandoned their properties to the derelicts and the junkies.

  Over the years, for no apparent reason, many of the Puerto Ricans had come to blame their misfortunes on the few thousand Jews still remaining in the neighborhood. Concentrated in a small area along Grand Street by the East River, they controlled the only middle-and upper-income housing in the 7th Precinct, a fact bitterly resented by, for instance, those Spanish families staying on 6th Street between Avenues C and D where only three buildings remained standing. The Puerto Ricans referred to the area along Grand Street as “Jewtown” and every eight or nine months, one or another of the street gangs, ever in search of manhood, would begin systematically to harass the more affluent Jews.

  This was very old news to Moodrow. Somehow, he’d never been identified with either group. The people of the 7th Precinct, Puerto Rican or Jew, recognized him as a man who pursued his own ends. He was merciless to those criminals he chose to persecute and not much better to ordinary citizens when he was on a hunt. But they also knew they could come to him with a beef, that he would intercede if, for instance, Mrs. Perez’ bodega on Rivington and Orchard was being systematically looted by junkies or if Mel Lipsky’s son, presently at Riker’s Island awaiting trial for credit-card fraud, was being threatened by that institution’s resident homosexual community. He would handle this new problem as he’d handled all the others—by pursuing his aim doggedly, with a dedication that at times seemed almost mindless. Even as Captain Epstein rattled on, Moodrow began to choose a course of action. He would begin at the Boy’s Club on Ludlow Street, a double storefront with three boxing rings and a pile of miscellaneous, sweat-soaked equipment. The Roberto Clemente Gym had produced three national Golden Gloves champions as well as an Olympic silver medalist and a host of professionals. Moodrow went there regularly to work out. He would spar with anyone. Dressed in sweatpants and sweatshirt, he towered over the young amateurs and the deal was that he would allow them to take their best shots without trying to hit back. He spun them around, leaned on them, sidestepped, pushed an elbow into a chin, took the punches on his arms—all with the freaky grace of a dancing bear. The kids loved the opportunity to try to deck the cop. No one under 185 pounds had ever done it, but there was still satisfaction in digging a left into Moodrow’s ribs, hoping to produce some slight grimace. His appearances at the gym offered a welcome break from the endless workouts and the sight of the 265-pound sergeant waltzing with a fourteen-year-old lightweight brought rare smiles to an otherwise grim occupation. These were the best of the ghetto youth, the most highly disciplined of the street kids. They were not informants, but they, too, hated and feared the mindless violence of the criminals and junkies who haunted the Lower East Side, and they would point Moodrow in the right direction if they took to his cause.

  “Well?”

  Moodrow looked up to find Captain Epstein staring at him from across the desk.

  “Well what?”

  “C’mon, Stanley. What the hell have we been talking about?” Epstein smacked his palm against the desktop. He reminded himself, once more, of how much he needed Moodrow. “The Asher Levy Nursing Homes for Christ sake.”

  Moodrow shrugged. “Chadwick don’t mean shit to me.”

  “Good,” Epstein grinned broadly, already looking for some way to get rid of the sergeant. “By the way, did you tell that agent about the Greek?”

  Moodrow returned Epstein’s smile, trying to think of a way to get another beer out of the captain. “Fuck, no,” he said.

  6

  THE MELEDY SODA WORKS built in 1924 and long abandoned, still sits on top of a small hill overlooking Countess Moore High School in Staten Island. A perennial eyesore in a middle-class residential community, the local economic planning board has, on several occasions, resolved to have it demolished, but has yet to come up with the money. It lies, appropriately enough, on Meledy Road, which runs one short block between Merrill and Richmond Avenues, and its second floor still offers a clear view of the Rockport-Central Housing Development, fifteen dwellings arranged in a neat rectangle on four streets—Hillman Avenue, Morgan Lane, Leggett Place and Jardine Avenue. The single-story ranch homes are only three years old and still retain the raw look of newly landscaped developments. The maples are small, and their trunks, wrapped with burlap, and the azaleas, though carefully trimmed, have yet to grow to the level of the windows. A thief would see these streets as threatening, as o
ffering no cover, no place to hide, but what is danger to the thief is opportunity to the assassin.

  Nevertheless, on the night Effie Bloom drove the van past Countess Moore High School, the residents slept peacefully, prepared to wait out the years necessary for the neighborhood to mature. There was no one awake to observe her passage along the deserted street, no one to notice her park beside the empty factory. She turned to Johnny Katanos squatting in the back. “Good hunting,” she whispered, receiving a thin smile in return as he slipped through the rear doors, backpack in place. He move confidently in the darkness, going straight through the yard to a door in the southeast corner of the building. Bending back the already vandalized sheet-metal covering, he stepped quickly inside.

  Most of the Meledy Soda Works consisted of a single, huge space, nearly three stories high, which held the machinery: enormous brass cookers and bottles by the thousands flowing along conveyor belts, that made the plant run. The machinery had long since been sold for salvage and the only clue remaining to the original use of the building was the broken glass covering the floor. Johnny moved through it without making a sound, pushing the glass ahead of him with the tip of his shoe. He felt the glass gave him an advantage because he would now be able to hear intruders from a long way off, while he, himself, would be absolutely silent. He kept one hand on the eastern wall as he slowly made his way north, pausing every few seconds to listen, straining for any presence beside his own. Within fifteen steps, he heard voices coming from the stairway and he flattened himself against the wall an instant before a match flared through an open doorway.

  “Hey, baby, you wanna smoke?” The voice was heavy, a slurred, junkie croak.

  “No, man, I’m cool.”

  “What you mean, you cool? How you cool? You crazy?”

  A snore, loud and choking with a sudden hitch at the end.

  “Shit, this honky sleepin’ already. Hey, Jockamo, you sleepin’, man?” A pause, punctuated by increasingly loud snoring. “We gon’ take that mother off, man. Jus’ like I say. He easy. Gon’ be just like fallin’ asleep. Damn, I bet we get four, five thousand… You listenin’? I say thousands. And it just be sittin’ there waitin’. You got the piece, baby, so it be up to you.”

  Johnny’s instructions had been clear and precise and, along with all the rest of the cell, he had agreed to them at the final planning session. He was to abort the operation in the face of unforeseen developments. Muzzafer had lectured at length on the danger of improvisation. “The changing of a plan,” he’d explained, “always sets forth a new series of causes and effects which are necessarily unpredictable. The true revolutionary is able to postpone an action, because he or she understands that victory is inevitable and personal satisfaction is counter-productive. Ultimately, success depends on our ability to act as a unit in all phases of an operation. You Americans all want to be cowboys, standing at ten paces with your six-guns blazing, but you must realize that you face a mechanical beast, a computerized gunslinger, and if you cannot match his efficiency, he will destroy you merely to be able to add you to the ‘solved’ file of his IBM.”

  It took Johnny all of ten seconds to reject Muzzafer’s reasoning. Even as he heard the voices, he felt the sudden rush of blood to his face and throat. Slowly, ears straining, he lowered the pack to the floor, pulling a long, black hunting knife from a sheath strapped to his ankle. He had known many junkies on the Lower East Side. They shot up, spoke for a few moments, then fell into a trancelike sleep. These two were like fat, cage-raised guinea pigs suddenly tossed into a crate with a hungry python and, from this point of view, Johnny Katanos’ legitimate prey—an unexpected bonus for an assassin without politics.

  Johnny moved slowly, silently, guided by the soft junkie breathing, until he was kneeling over the first man. He paused, waiting for the full rush of desire, then shot his hand forward, incredibly fast, closing off the mouth and nose. He experienced just a single pang of regret—it was too dark to look in the man’s eyes. Then he pushed the knife into the soft throat below his hand, through the veins and tendons, taking the rush of hot blood as his reward.

  “Whass happenin’, man?”

  Johnny’s leg snapped out, almost without his will, straight to the source of the words, striking the man across the mouth and driving his head back into the wall with such force the hapless junkie never felt Johnny’s weight pressed against his chest or the point of the knife as it thrust upward through the jaw tendons under his right ear, piercing almost to the center of the brain. Johnny twisted the knife back and forth, pushing against the junkie’s hip. It was close, so very close, and the night had only just begun.

  Then he was all business again, seeming to throw off his ecstasy like a topcoat. He dragged the bodies under the stairwell, feeling his way through the darkness, and began to climb toward the second floor, pausing every few seconds, listening, tasting the damp odors of dust and mildew. He stopped at the head of a long hallway—fifteen steps to an office door on the left, sliding forward, gliding through the broken glass. A deep calm washed over him, relaxing the bunched muscles in his shoulders, a sense of the deepest and most profound purpose. As a street kid, equally afraid of the institution and the alternative foster home, survival gave his life its only meaning. Now there was more to it.

  The office door opened silently and to eyes accustomed to the absolute darkness of the inner plant, the room seemed full of light. One north-facing window had had several cinder blocks knocked out by vandals and the faint glow of the city made a small pool of light in the far corner of the room. Johnny dropped the backpack, opening it quickly to pull out the pieces of his weapon. He began to assemble them immediately, his movements smooth and rapid due to hours of practice, though he paused again and again, always listening, and he did not look through the window, not even to glance at the street below, until he was finished and the first bullet chambered. Only then, at 3:30, did he begin to sight-in on the small home at 18 Jardine Avenue, residence of the neighborhood’s only celebrity.

  Gerald Gutterman, three-term congressman and presently a judge in New York City’s civil court was not primarily known for his contribution to American politics, though he felt that he’d given his whole life to the service of his country and his people. An ardent Zionist since his college days at New York University in the fifties, he’d begun raising funds for Israel right after graduation and, declared his enemies in New York’s more liberal circles, he’d used his years in the House only to further the cause of the Jewish homeland. His name graced the letterheads of almost every Zionist organization and when he wasn’t selling Israeli Bonds or haranguing congressmen, he was organizing Jewish teens for summer work in the various agricultural and manufacturing communes called kibbutzim. He was a tireless worker, always full of energy. By 4 AM, he would be out of his bed and into the shower. By five o’clock, he would leave his home, already absorbed in the coming day’s activities and completely unaware of Johnny Katanos, rifle propped on a bipod, silencer secured, nightscope in place.

  In some ways, for Johnny, the waiting, the anticipation was the best part of the operation. The moment of action would be gone almost before it occurred and he would be forced to occupy himself with disassembling his rifle and making good his escape. Now, eyes locked on the small, darkened home 250 yards away, he could afford the luxury of fantasy. He saw the congressman stepping out on the small porch, worked and reworked the scene until he could see every detail of face and clothing; saw his wife follow, clutching a robe against the early morning cold. She smiles at her husband, puts her arms around his neck, fingers linked, and pecks him playfully on the lips. They pull back slightly and just for a moment, Gerald Gutterman conjures an image from her girlhood. He sees a flash of copper hair, a firm breast, nipple almost piercing the palm of his hand, and then he is dead and the smile falls from the face of the old woman as the side of his head erupts, spraying her with bone and blood. Johnny Katanos rehearsed this moment again and again, changing the expression on he
r face: consternation, anguish, fear, especially fear, followed by a flash of recognition. He had her turn, somehow knowing his location, and their eyes lock, hers soft, gray, and his as black as the olives of Greece. Slowly, almost hypnotically, he slips another round into the chamber and takes careful aim.

  At 4:15, a light went on at the rear of the house, in the bedroom, and then, a moment later, a smaller light in the bathroom. Once again, Johnny brought his attention to the doorway at 18 Jardine Avenue. He was using a Steyr-Mannlicher SSG, a .30-caliber rifle capable of placing a three-inch grouping in a small paper target at a distance of 500 yards, even with a sound suppressor attached. Finished with a Litton nightscope, a device able to amplify available light 40,000 times, it could, at 250 yards, in the hands of a professional, punch a hole in a mosquito’s ass by the light of a single star.

  But Johnny was not a professional marksman. He was a good shot, even a gifted amateur, but the Steyr-Mannlicher, the assassin’s ‘green-gun,’ was too much weapon for him, and when his opportunity came, he missed his spot by half a foot. Gerald Gutterman came through his front door alone. He received no goodbye kiss from his wife who, in fact, had her own bedroom and was sleeping soundly, courtesy of the prior evening’s dose of chloral hydrate. As it turned out, the only witness to the opening round of Muzzafer’s war, was Peter DiLuria, a twelve-year-old newsboy out on his daily rounds. He was pedaling along Jardine Avenue, trying to pluck a Daily News from his canvas bag, when Johnny Katanos squeezed off his first and only shot. The bullet, six inches below its intended target on the side of his head, struck the judge just beneath his right collar bone, moved like a billiard shot from his ribs to his spine and then up through the trachea and into his brain, where it exploded with enough force to send his eyes sailing into the wet grass. There they lay, like two emeralds, waiting for Morris, the Guttermans’ cat, who would find and eat them within the hour, a totally unexpected treasure.