Toughs Page 12

  "Tough guys," Gina said, each word a sneer.

  Loretto didn't respond. He had drifted into thinking about all the guys he ran the streets with, how most of them had fathers who were dead, or drunks, or just up and disappeared. Some of them, like him and Vince, didn't have mothers, either. The Barontis, maybe they didn't have a father around anymore, but they had a mother who kept them together, and they had each other. "I make fifty dollars a week," he said. "Even if I could find a legit job, I wouldn't make half of that."

  Several blocks later, Gina asked, "You saving any of it, what you make?"

  "Sure," Loretto answered. "I am. I have a bank account."

  "No kiddin'? I never heard of a gangster putting money in a bank."

  "I guess I'm unusual that way." He was pleased to see Gina smile for the first time since he'd left Vince and returned to his apartment.

  They walked the rest of the way to her place in silence, Gina's eyes focused on nothing, lost in her own thoughts, and Loretto watching everything around him, the streets, the buildings, the cars parked on the streets, the occasional cart, the garbage pails at the curb. In the building across from Gina's, a frilly white dress was suspended from a hanger on a fire escape. It fluttered in the breeze as if dancing alone in the quiet and the dark.

  At the entrance to her building, Gina said, "You walked all this way, you might as well come up."

  Loretto was too surprised to answer. He waited, watching her as she unlocked the door and held it open.

  "If my brothers find out, they'll kill you," she said. She pushed the door open with her back.

  Loretto said, "You're hard to figure, you know that?"

  "You scared?" she asked.

  "Yeah," Loretto said, and then he followed her into the building.

  Wednesday - August 5, 1931

  11:40 p.m.

  This is crazy." Lottie leaned into the bathroom, where Vince was at the mirror, fixing his tie for the second time, pulling a length of blue silk through a loop, grasping the knot between his thumb and forefinger and pulling it smartly to his neck. "It don't add up," she said, and she launched once again into the arguments she'd been making all night, that Jack Diamond couldn't be trusted, that Vince was crazy for agreeing to meet with him alone, at Young's, at night, unarmed. It could be Jack was holding a grudge and planned to kill him and that was all this meeting was about, nothing more, just getting rid of Vince Coll if Vince was crazy enough to show up. "Why's it got to be you alone?" she asked. "Just tell me that. Why's that the deal?"

  Vince smiled at himself in the mirror. "'Cause he's scared of me," he said, and he winked at Lottie's reflection over his shoulder.

  "You're not being smart about this, Vince." Lottie thought about arguing some more and then gave up. She left Vince alone in the bathroom, crossed the apartment's dingy, barely furnished living room, and returned to the bedroom, where she sat on the edge of their unmade bed. She was close to tears and it embarrassed her. Guys never cried, at least not guys like Vince.

  They were in Albany, where they'd rented an apartment not far from Young's on Broadway, Diamond's joint. Frank and the boys were nearby, in Averill Park, with Florence. They'd gotten word to Jack as soon as they'd hit town, and then he'd made them wait days before agreeing to a meeting. Lottie clutched a fistful of sheet, brought it to her nose, and inhaled. The deep red sheets were silky and fine, from Bendel on Fifth Avenue. They turned the bed into a little corner of luxury surrounded by drab, unadorned walls and a pair of uncurtained windows, one hidden behind yellowing venetian blinds, the other behind a faded green shade. Lottie lay back on the mattress, using a clump of sheets for a pillow, and looked up at a slowly revolving ceiling fan that did little more than nudge the muggy air. She was wearing the same black slip she'd had on all day and she ran her hand over her belly and down between her legs. She had the crazy urge to make love to Vince one more time before he left for Young's, though they'd gone at it twice already, once in the morning on waking and then again, long and leisurely, in the afternoon.

  For all his toughness, Vince hadn't known anything about lovemaking before she'd met him. All he'd known was whores who went at it fast and wanted their money. She'd taught him to slow down. She'd shown him what to do. He'd seemed mystifed at first and then amazed that there could be more to it than a furious rush and finish. Now he liked it. He liked all of it. He opened up for her in bed, became someone only she knew. In the morning she liked to lean over him and hold him in his sleep till he rose up lead-pipe hard in her hand and then she wanted him inside her, wanted him moving slow inside her, and even thinking about it while lying on her back looking up at the ceiling fan she was flushed and wet—and then the sound of the medicine-cabinet mirror clicking shut pulled her out of her dream and she remembered that Vince was on his way to Young's to meet Diamond. She admitted to herself that she was scared.

  "What are you doing, Vince?" Lottie shouted at the ceiling, not a question at all, an announcement that she was in the bedroom waiting for him. When he didn't answer, her thoughts drifted to her daughter. Often it happened like that: in the middle of something that had nothing to do with Klara, Lottie'd find herself thinking about her, wondering what she was doing, if she ever thought about her mother. She was a pretty girl, like her mom. Vince knew about her. It wasn't a secret—but Lottie couldn't do the things she had to do with a little girl in her life, and so Klara wasn't around. She was with Jake's people. Jake was Lottie's first husband. She'd married him at sixteen when she got pregnant, and Jake was dead before she was eighteen—which wasn't a shock given he was a thief and a cheat—and then there was nothing to do but leave Klara with his people. She was a big girl already. Twelve years old, that was hard to believe. Lottie Kreisberger has a twelve-year-old daughter. You'd never guess it by looking. Vince hadn't guessed, and he still didn't know Lottie's real age. He figured she was a little older but it didn't matter to him.

  At first everything Lottie did, everything, it was all for Klara. She wasn't going to raise her daughter in some cold-water flat while she slaved as a housemaid for a banker's wife, like her own mother did till the day she died. Not that life again, she wouldn't have it. So she married Rudy, who made good money in the ice rackets, but then he treated her like a slave and she saw that working as a housewife for a racketeer could be just the same as working for a banker's wife as a housemaid, so she took up with Sam Westin, a guy her own age, with a college degree from Columbia. She'd always known she was smarter than Rudy. Then she saw she was smarter than Sam, too, a guy with a hotshot college degree. She could figure the angles better. She could see the big picture. What she needed was a guy to do the rough stuff, and she thought Sam could be that guy—but then Rudy found out and pulled a gun on Sam, and Sam wound up putting a knife in Rudy's heart and having to hide out from the cops, who caught him anyway and charged him with murder, a rap he beat, and after that they opened Conte's together, a midtown restaurant—and there she was again, working in a restaurant like a chump, but that was where she met Vince, and Vince convinced Sam he should drop out of the picture.

  Now she was close. Now with Vince she was close. She was so close she could feel it all around her, the good clothes, the fine homes, and it wasn't too late, she could still get Klara back. She'd raise her in style, with the best of everything, and they'd travel, too, all over the world, Lottie and Klara and Vince. They'd take cruises and there'd be all the money they could ever want, to do whatever they wanted. Who was tougher than Vince? Who was smarter than Lottie? They just needed to get their foot in the door, to get planted solidly, and this thing with Jack Diamond could do it if Jack didn't kill Vince first—and then Lottie's drifting thoughts came full circle and she was back to worrying about Vince going to see Diamond alone and unarmed. "Vince!" she called—and as if in immediate response to her summons, he appeared in the bedroom doorway looking sharp in a three-piece suit, black with a narrow blue stripe. He twirled a gray fedora on his fingertip and then ft it to his head with a sm
irk that said he knew he looked good. "Ain't you the cat's pajamas," Lottie said. She sat up in bed and rested her chin on interlocked fingers.

  "Give me a kiss." Vince offered a hand up. "I've got to hit the road."

  Lottie let Vince pull her up from the bed and into his arms. She took his hat off as she kissed him, her free arm wrapped around his neck. When she leaned away, she gave him a look that said she was still worried.

  Vince took his hat back and ft it on his head again, the way he liked it, brim down. "Jack won't kill me, doll. Not once he hears me out."

  "But that's just it," Lottie said. "How do you know he'll take the time to hear you out? How do you know he's not still all burned up about you going after him?"

  "I don't," Vince said, and he pulled Lottie behind him as he made his way out of the bedroom.

  "Jeez, Vince." Lottie tugged at his hand. "This is crazy."

  "No, it's not." Vince stopped in the middle of the kitchen and for the

  first time seemed annoyed. "Ain't this your plan, doll? Didn't you figure this for a deal Jack can't pass up?"

  "Yeah, sure," Lottie said. "But that's not what's wrong. It's going to see him all alone that's crazy."

  "Jack'll hear me out," Vince said, "even if he is still burned up. Why shouldn't he? Do I have guts, showin' up by myself, naked, at his club? You think he won't see that?"

  "Sure, he'll see it. Anybody'd see it."

  "Besides, he can't help but like me. We're a couple of micks, aren't we? Don't we both hate Dutch? Sure, he'll hear me out, doll." He took her hands and gave her a perfunctory kiss on the lips. "Don't worry," he said, and he started out the door with Lottie right behind him.

  In the hallway, as Vince headed for the building's front door and the street, Lottie said, "You shouldn't be battling each other, you and Diamond. You're a pair, you two. You should be working together against Madden and Dutch and the Combine and all them. The two of you together, you can bring them to their knees."

  Vince tipped his hat to Lottie and winked, meaning he got it, he knew the spiel, and she shouldn't worry, and then he disappeared into the night and a chorus of insects chirruping like lunatics. Lottie, in her slip, followed him out the door and watched as the car lights came on and he drove off without a look back. She waited there in the dark, surrounded by chirping that rose and subsided in waves, under a sky clotted with roiling clouds.

  Thursday - August 6, 1931

  12:15 a.m.

  Their first night in Albany, Vince had taken Lottie to the new RKO Palace, with its soaring neon signs and bright corner marquee grand as anything on Manhattan's Broadway—but the vaudeville acts between shows weren't very funny and they'd left before seeing the second feature. Now, as he drove past the theater, the marquee was dark. Overhead, trolley wires followed the avenue and he cruised over the tracks with one arm dangling out the window, a pistol on the seat beside him. The streets were dead, a long line of shadows and dark windows. He glanced at the gun and checked his wristwatch again. He was supposed to be at Young's at midnight, but he was enjoying the quiet streets and the summer air on his face, and he figured he'd make them wait. Jack and Vince were cut from the same cloth, Irishmen still with family back in the old country, gone from pig poor to in the money and got there the same way, only Jack was getting on and Vince figured he was tired of getting shot up. Vince had on a tailored suit that cost more than his mother had earned in a year scrubbing other people's clothes and washing floors. He straightened his tie and adjusted his hat and figured he looked like a million.

  At Young's, he parked in the alley and was out of the car and knocking at the back door without a thought in his head. On either side of the door, a pair of dark stains still wet and stinking. Maybe his heart was beating a little faster than normal, but nothing anybody'd notice. He knocked again and the door opened on two mugs with guns pointing at him and a third guy, huge, well over six foot tall and must have weighed three hundred pounds, a 12-gauge leveled at his waist. The space was brightly lit by a bare electric bulb dangling from a black wire. "Boys," Vince said, "I believe your boss is expecting me."

  One of the gunmen motioned for him to come in, and the second pushed him against the wall and frisked him while the first checked the alley and the big guy watched, unmoving, his finger on the shotgun trigger, the barrel resting in his hand. "Gents," Vince said, "I'm alone and I ain't heeled, as agreed upon."

  "Okay," the big guy said, "so now we know." His voice was about what Vince expected, low and gruff and slow, like he had to think about every syllable. With the shotgun barrel, he pointed up a flight of stairs behind him. "Let's go," he said. "Jack's waiting." Midway up the stairs, he added, "Jack don't like to be kept waiting."

  At the top of the steps, one of the gunmen rushed past him and opened a second door, behind which was a dimly lit room lined with wooden whiskey crates and with barely enough space for the card table and four chairs at its center. Another door led out of the room. From behind it came the muted, tinny sound of a player piano and someone singing, as if there might be another room or two between them and the source of the singing.

  Jack Diamond waited at the table with his chair tilted back. He was neatly dressed in a three-piece suit, a gray fedora with a black hatband on the table in front of him, next to a mostly empty bottle of whiskey and a big pistol with a round magazine that looked more suited to a tommy gun. Jack was still the flashy guy newspapers loved to write about, but his eyes were bloodshot and looked tired. He leaned back in his chair and observed Vince as if looking at a horse he might bet on.

  Vince said, "Jack! How you been?" He took a seat across from him and placed his hands, palms down, on the table. "Long way from the Hotsy Totsy." Behind him, the door closed and the two gunmen moved to either side of the room, up against the whiskey crates. Vince glanced over his shoulder and found the shotgun pointed at the back of his head. To Jack he said, "Where'd you find this guy? He'll do to intimidate, won't he?"

  "Football player," Jack said. "Used to play for the Giants."

  "Yeah? At the Polo Grounds?" Vince craned his neck to look behind him again. "What position you play?"

  Jack said, "He's not very talkative—but then, I don't pay him to talk."

  Vince gave up on waiting for a reply and turned back to Diamond. One by one he took five cash-stuffed envelopes out of his pocket and placed them next to him on the table.

  Jack gestured to one of his men and tapped his finger on the table in front of Vince. A whiskey bottle and a glass appeared, and Vince poured himself a drink.

  Jack held his own glass up in a silent toast, finished off his drink, and poured himself another. "I had me this dream last night," he said, and though it was evident he'd been drinking hard, he sounded plenty sharp. "I dreamed the dead were all around me like a bunch of ghosts: all the guys I'd plugged or had plugged. Dozens of 'em. Joey Noe was there. A bunch of Dutch's boys. But my brother Eddie was there, too. And my mother. All sorts of people—and while I'm walking along this street I don't recognize, they're looking down at me from windows, from rooftops, from fire escapes, as if they're expecting something of me, or maybe they want something from me. You ever have a dream like that, Vince?" Jack went on before Vince could answer. "Nah," he said. "You're too young. You probably sleep like the angels."

  Vince finished off his drink and poured another. "You remind me of your brother," he said, "God rest his soul." He held his drink out across the table. "The two of you with the same funny kind of ears. No offense intended."

  Jack said, "It don't hurt me any with the dames."

  "Sure," Vince said. "You're famous in that area."

  Jack fixed Vince with an unblinking stare. He seemed to be growing angry.

  Vince said, "I hate that miserable cheap son of a bitch, Dutch. When he couldn't get to us, he went after our brothers."

  "That he did," Jack said, "but he killed yours. He missed Eddie."

  "Sure, he missed him," Vince said, "but getting sprayed by bullets did
n't help Eddie's health, either, did it? He hurried him to the grave, didn't he? He went after our brothers, didn't he? That's all I'm saying, Jack."

  Jack nodded. Some of the anger went out of his eyes.

  Vince finished off his drink and poured another. Jack did the same. "I can do the fighting," Vince said. "I'm young, and ain't nobody even put one bullet in me yet. I'm feckin' invincible. I get the chance, I'll send Dutch straight to hell."

  "I been hit fourteen times," Jack said. "The bullet ain't been made can kill Jack Diamond."

  Vince lifted his glass to Jack in a toast.

  Jack asked, "What's in the envelopes?"

  "Twenty-five Gs." Vince pushed the envelopes across the table with one hand and finished off his drink with the other.

  "And what is it you're hoping to buy with twenty-five grand?"

  Vince looked around at the men holding guns on him.