Toughs Page 18

  He wasn't especially tired but the possibility of a nap was suddenly attractive. He took off his shoes and put them under the coffee table. He draped his jacket over the back of the couch and put his hat on top of the jacket. By the time he loosened his tie and settled his head on a couch cushion, he could already feel sleep sinking into him. It was a strange sense of sleep. It felt more like weariness than tiredness. He thought of Joe Mullins putting his arm around his shoulders and warning him to be careful with the girls, and then he pictured Joe Haley going from hotel to hotel all over town and reserving rooms. He remembered the shotgun in the trunk of the car and pineapples in the back seat, and then he saw Dominic and Gaspar looking up at him from a hole in the ground. His thoughts were doing the crazy things they did before falling asleep, popping around randomly, veering off one way and then another. He saw Sister Mary Catherine kneeling at his feet, untying his shoelaces. He was a child in that memory. He was back in Mount Loretto, seated on his bed, watching the sister untie his shoelaces. She was dressed in her long black habit and white wimple. Before he fell asleep, before he dropped off into silence and darkness, the sister looked up and said something. He didn't know what she said. He couldn't make it out. But she said something to him, of that much he was certain. She looked up and her lips moved and she spoke.

  1:30 p.m.

  Madon! Are you seeing this?" Tuffy struggled to pull his tweed cap down low on his forehead. He checked the pistol in his shoulder holster, patting it without a thought as he kept his eyes on the scene playing out on the street. They were coming up on the warehouse. An elderly woman and a boy were arguing outside a storefront about whose turn it was to sweep the sidewalk. The woman cursed like a demon and swatted the boy with her broom while the boy stood his ground as best he could and hurled curses right back at her. In the street, a couple of Edison workers climbed out of a manhole and shouted for the two of them to quit making a racket.

  "We got a regular circus out here today," Frank said.

  "This fuckin' cap," Tuffy said. "It's too small." He yanked it down as best he could over the mop of his hair. "Pull over there." He pointed to a spot on the sidewalk near the loading dock.

  "You want to do the driving?" Frank passed the garage and turned the corner.

  The car traveled slowly around the block. The next time they approached the garage, the woman and boy were out of sight and the Edison workers were climbing back down the manhole. On the loading dock, a skinny kid in overalls smoked a cigarette, his face turned up to the sun.

  "Come on," Tuffy said. "Let's get this over with."

  Frank drove past the dock, made a three-point turn, and parked at the curb, where he had a good view of the street and the garage. "I'll keep the car running."

  Tuffy pulled his cap down and started for the garage.

  Frank opened the passenger-side window as Tuffy climbed the stairs to the loading dock. He heard Tuffy say, "Where's Joe Mullins?" and saw the kid in overalls point back into the shadows. At the same moment, on the street, the boy came hurrying out of the storefront with the old woman right behind him. She shouted and cursed and wielded the broom as if it were a spear, jabbing at the boy with its yellow bristles. Frank put the car in gear. The kid on the loading dock tossed his cigarette away and went back into the garage, and a moment later the pop of a gunshot came from someplace out of sight. On the street, the Edison workers reemerged from their manhole. They were shouting at the old woman as Joe Mullins stumbled into the sunlight and collapsed onto his back. Tuffy came out of the shadows, stood over Mullins, one foot on either side of his chest, and put two bullets in his head. By the time the old woman and the boy looked up from their screaming match at the sound of the gunshots, Tuffy had his back to them and his gun holstered. He jumped down from the loading dock, took one step, and tripped. The old lady and the boy hurried back into the store. Tuffy picked himself up, brushed off his pants, and continued to the car. The Edison workers started for the loading dock. When Frank pulled the car up and threw open the passenger door for Tuffy, they reconsidered and scurried back down the manhole.

  "What the hell was that?" Tuffy nodded toward the workers as they disappeared below the street.

  Frank drove slowly toward the manhole.

  Tuffy saw what he was thinking and said, "Don't worry about them mugs. They ain't stupid. They know what's good for 'em."

  Frank drove at a crawl past the manhole cover and then shifted gears and sped away. He glanced at Tuffy. "Where's your cap?"

  Tuffy clutched at his hair. "Jesus," he said. "Must have fell off."

  Frank laughed quietly, as if everything in the world was a big joke. In the column of sky directly in front of them, enclosed by rows of brick buildings, what looked like a thousand sparrows dipped down into the avenue and soared low over the streets in a dark cloud.

  Frank said, "I saw you put two in his head."

  Tuffy said, "So much for his photographic memory." A moment later he laughed as if he just got his own joke.

  1:35 p.m.

  When Mike and Vince drove past Richie Cabo's Majestic Garage on Westchester Avenue, they found a dozen prohees arresting everybody in sight. Three beer trucks were in the loading area, each of them surrounded by agents. Inside the garage, in a shaft of bright sunlight, a pair of agents were looking over a clipboard, two guys in workman's clothes on their bellies in front of them.

  "We'll come back later," Mike said.

  "Nah," Vince said. "Stop the car."

  Vince was in the passenger seat, holding a pineapple in his lap. He had the crudely fashioned black bomb in one hand and a cigarette lighter in the other. He was wearing a crisp dark gray suit and a new fedora. He looked like he might be on his way to a fancy dinner. With his hair dyed dark and his mustache and the Harold Lloyd glasses, he could have been mistaken for a young banker. Except for the bomb.

  Mike stopped in the middle of the street and looked back at the warehouse as if he might have missed something. "The place is crawlin' with prohees. What the hell are you thinkin'?"

  "Back it up." Vince lit the pineapple's fuse, opened the door, and stepped out onto the running board, the bomb in one hand, the door frame in the other.

  Mike yelled, "Jesus H!," and slammed the car into reverse. At the entrance to the garage he jammed on the brakes and the car skidded to a stop.

  Vince lost his footing and jumped from the running board to the street, where the prohees were all looking in his direction, some of them already reaching for their guns.

  "Hey, boys!" Vince yelled. He threw the bomb, its fuse sizzling, into the back of one of Cabo's trucks and jumped into the car, which peeled away down the street as a pair of prohees leaped from the beer truck to the pavement. By the time the bomb exploded a few seconds later, Vince and Mike were off the avenue and on a side street on their way back to Manhattan. They were both laughing like a pair of fools, throwing glances behind them at the column of smoke already rising over the rooftops.

  2:45 p.m.

  Detectives Givons and Dwyer climbed the stairs to Commissioner Mulrooney's office with Al Giovanetti behind them. Giovanetti was also a detective, though he was relatively new to the force, having come to New York from Philly only a few years earlier. He was a young guy, still in his twenties, and Givons and Dwyer were both pushing forty. No one knew all the details, but everyone knew the outline: Giovanetti had refused to go along and the brass in Philly had told him he'd best go along or move along. He'd moved along to New York, with his reputation following him, and he'd wound up working with Bill Givons and Jimmy Dwyer, two detectives everyone knew were a couple of straight arrows. Mulrooney had put the three of them in charge of the Coll case and the Vengelli boy's murder.

  At the top of the stairs, down a wide corridor of polished wood doors with frosted-glass windows, they found Mulrooney standing at the entrance to his office in a topcoat and derby, shaking hands with Will Jackson, the assistant district attorney of Bronx County. They looked like they were just concludi
ng some business.

  "Well, look who it is coming to visit us," Mulrooney said at the sight of the detectives. "Boys," he added, "I hope to hell you've got some good news."

  "We might at that," Dwyer answered.

  Detective Givons said to Jackson, "You'll be interested in this, too."

  Mulrooney slapped his hands together in anticipation. "Come on in, boys." He led the men through a reception room and into his office, where he hung his coat and hat on a hall tree and threw his big body down in a cushioned leather chair behind a redwood desk. He was a man nearing sixty, with a somber face and broad shoulders—a physically imposing man despite his age.

  Will Jackson took his coat off, draped it over his arm, and took a seat in a chair next to the desk. The detectives remained standing. Everyone knew this visit had to be related to the Vengelli murder and Vince Coll. With the months ticking by and no progress on the case, newspapers all over the nation were calling for action, and with the papers raising a racket, the politicians were jumpy.

  "Well?" Mulrooney grasped the arms of his chair and leaned forward.

  Dwyer said, "We think Coll's back in town."

  "That's not news," Jackson said. "We get reports of Coll sightings every day."

  "This is different." Giovanetti stood beside the door with his arms at his sides. The men all looked at him as if they had forgotten he was in the room.

  Dwyer turned back to the commissioner. "Joe Mullins got rubbed out."

  "Who?" Mulrooney looked at Jackson as if he might know. Jackson shrugged.

  "And isn't that the mystery?" Dwyer said. "Why Joe Mullins? He's a foreman at one of Dutch's beer drops. He makes thirty-five bucks a week. Made thirty-five bucks a week."

  "There's no question but they were looking for Mullins," Giovanetti said from the doorway. "The killer asked for him by name."

  Mulrooney said, "Cut to the chase, boys. What's this got to do with Coll?"

  Givons said, "Same time Mullins was getting filled full of holes, somebody tossed a bomb into one of Richie Cabo's beer trucks."

  "Here's the point of the matter." Giovanetti sounded frustrated with the progress of the meeting. "There were prohees all over Cabo's garage when a good-looking kid gets out of a car, yells to get their attention, and then throws a bomb in the back of a truck. Who's that sound like? Who's that crazy?" he asked and then promptly answered his own question. "Sounds like Vince Coll."

  The district attorney said, "You think Coll's resuming his war with Dutch Schultz?"

  "Yes, sir," Dwyer said. "That's what we think."

  Givons said, "The capper is somebody threw a pineapple into the Mad Dot just last week."

  "Let me guess," Jackson said. "One of Coll's speaks."

  Givons said, "You got it," and Mulrooney said, "Was anybody hurt in the truck bombing?"

  "Just the poor truck," Dwyer said. "It's seen its last beer run."

  "Did we get a description of the kid throwing the bomb?"

  "Dark hair, round glasses, early twenties," Giovanetti said, glancing at a notepad.

  "That's not Coll."

  Dwyer said, "Could be disguised," and Mulrooney nodded.

  "We got license-plate numbers and descriptions of the cars in both incidents," Giovanetti said.

  "What we'd like," Dwyer raised his voice to take over this part of the conversation from Giovanetti, "is every flatfoot in the city checking every street corner and garage. If we find the cars, we can stake them out and hope that Coll shows his face."

  "I'll issue the order," Mulrooney said. "Boys," he added, and he picked up a newspaper from his desk. It was open to the sports pages and a picture of the Cards' third baseman, Pepper Martin, with the caption "The Wild Horse of the Osage." Mulrooney wasn't reading the paper, though. His thoughts were obviously elsewhere. "Boys," he said again, his face even more somber than usual, "if you see this baby killer . . . He's a mad dog, isn't he?"

  Jackson stood up. "If we put him on trial, he'll get the chair."

  Mulrooney tossed the paper down. "Roosevelt's been all over me," he said to Jackson. "Even Hoover's got his nose in this business." He waved the detectives out the door. "Go on," he said and went to take a seat beside Jackson and continue the conversation.

  6:15 p.m.

  Loretto woke to find Gina sitting on the couch at his feet watching him. The apartment was dark except for a dim light coming from the bedroom. Outside, beyond the living room windows, the light had faded to a somber shade of gray. Loretto had been dreaming, but the details flitted away as soon as he saw Gina and remembered he was in her apartment and realized he had fallen asleep. "Hey, beautiful," he said, his voice scratchy with sleep. "I conked out."

  Gina sighed and pulled her gaze away from the shadows. "You broke in to my apartment."

  "I knocked first."

  "Good of you." Gina slid away from Loretto and folded her arms over her chest. "What are you doing here?"

  "Do you want me to leave?"

  "Depends. Tell me what you're doing here and we'll see."

  Loretto found his shoes under the coffee table and slipped into them. "I came to see you. Where have you been?"

  "Working." She took Loretto's fedora and his jacket from the backrest and held them in her lap. "I'm a ticket taker at the Palace Theater now."

  "No kiddin'?" Loretto reached for his hat and jacket, but Gina held tight to them. He asked, "Who's playin' at the Palace?"

  "Bob Hope," Gina said. "Why'd you come to see me, Loretto? I thought we were all through."

  "We're not through, Gina. You know that." Loretto stretched and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "How come the lights are all off?"

  "You were sleeping peacefully. You were sleeping like a baby."

  Loretto put his hand on Gina's knee.

  Gina continued to look off into the shadows. "Is Dutch Schultz still out to kill you?" she asked. "Are you part of Vince Coll's gang now? You and Mike?"

  Loretto took Gina by the chin and turned her head to him. "What can I do?" he asked. "Tell me what I can do?"

  "You can quit being a gangster. You can walk away from it."

  "How? What do you think, Gina? I can turn in a resignation someplace?"

  "Would you? If you could?"

  "Quit? And then what?" Loretto took his fedora from Gina's lap and blocked it while he tried to find the right words. "What would I do? A guy like me. Even if we moved away from here, you and me. What would I do? Pick grapes out in California? Hope nobody ever recognized me and got word back to Dutch or Luciano? Is that a life?"

  Gina took the fedora from him and put it in her lap again. "What kind of a life do you have now?"

  "I don't know," he said. "Same life as always." He got up and went to the window. He opened it, sat on the ledge, and looked down to the street, where a couple of boys were running full speed and somewhere unseen a woman's voice was shouting a girl's name, calling her home for dinner.

  Gina came up behind Loretto and massaged his shoulders. "What are you doing in the city?" she asked. "Isn't it dangerous for you here?"

  "I'm with Vince and the boys," he said. "Dutch has been giving us trouble, and Vince is here to hit back."

  "Is Mike here, too, then?"

  "Everybody's here. Vince has a busy weekend planned."

  "But you're here with me," Gina said. The way she said it, it sounded more like a question than a statement.

  "I fell asleep," Loretto looked past Gina to the door but didn't move. "I should go."

  Gina wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him. "Stay." She backed up to look him over. She fixed his hair, pushing it off his forehead. "Stay here with me."

  Loretto said, "I can't," but Gina had already taken his hand and he was following her through the living room and into the bedroom, where a small lamp on the night table provided the only light. When she pulled him down onto the bed, he wrapped his arms around her and pressed his face into her neck. "For a while," he said. "I'll stay a while longer."

 
Gina answered with a kiss as she loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt.

  Loretto lay on his back and let Gina go about undressing him. Joe Mullins flitted into and out of his thoughts. Dominic had been dead for more than a month, but in some part of Loretto's mind he was still alive, and often, as was the case in that moment, Loretto thought of him as being nearby, somewhere he might go to visit him and talk like they used to, and then always an instant later the recognition came that he was dead. "I think a lot about Dominic," he said, as much to yank himself out of his feelings as to speak. "I can't get him out of my thoughts."

  Gina slipped Loretto's tie off from around his neck. She kissed him. "Don't think," she said, and she turned off the light. In the darkness, she knelt and pulled her dress over her head. "Stay with me. Spend the night with me."