Toughs Read online

  "Look at this," Bo said. Two or three feet past where the car had slid into a tree, the land dropped off precipitously into a deep ravine, with a stream at the bottom of it. Bo had heard the soft gurgling of water moving under ice as soon as he'd stepped into the woods. "A few more feet," he said, "and we'd all have been done for."

  Shorty and Henry came up alongside him. "Look at that," Shorty said, and he took a step closer to the edge of the ravine.

  Henry said, "Let's get the car back on the road."

  Bo glanced back to the car and saw that pushing it back to the road wouldn't be a problem, that he and Henry could handle it alone. "Shorty," he said. He lifted his pistol and aimed it at Shorty's chest. "I'm sorry, big guy, but you shouldn't have said nothin' about Vince Coll. We can't have you givin' him an alibi."

  Shorty raised his hands in protest but didn't get a chance to speak before Bo shot him four times in the head and chest, the gunshots cracking like hammer blows and knocking him back into the ravine, where he tumbled head over feet down to the stream bed. The big raccoon coat flapped about him as he fell and then settled over him where he landed so that he looked for all the world like a big animal crouched close to the stream, maybe getting a drink of water in the moonlight.

  Bo and Henry stood quietly at the edge of the ravine, the silence broken only by the murmuring of water. After a moment, Henry turned a slow circle, taking in the trees and the snow and noticing for the first time a boulder that seemed to push up out of the ground a dozen feet from where he stood. It was tall and massive and black and it looked like it must weigh tons. "Jesus," he said. "It's like the beginning of the world around here."

  "If he'd have just kept his mouth shut," Bo said, "he'd still be alive."

  "He wasn't none too bright," Henry said.

  Bo turned to the car. "Let's get going."

  Henry took hold of the door frame and the steering wheel and pulled while Bo crouched at the bumper and pushed. A minute later the car was off the icy gravel road and back on the pavement. Bo took off his gloves, rubbed his hands together, and put the gloves back on.

  "You want me to drive?" Henry asked.

  Bo said, "Yeah, sure," but instead of getting in the car, he went to the edge of the ravine and looked down again to the stream bed. A moment later, Henry joined him and the two men gazed down the steep hill where the snow cover was pristine, untouched anywhere except those places where Shorty's tumbling body had carved out a dark path to the water. They remained there in the silence a good while before Bo finally looked at his wristwatch and started back for the road with Henry following. Above them, the Milky Way hovered, light screaming down from its bright swirl of stars.

  4:05 a.m.

  Bo and Henry were drunk by the time Jack finally left Kiki's apartment and was helped into a yellow cab by a little guy in a cracked leather jacket with a knit cap and a bright red wool scarf wrapped around his neck. Jack was so drunk the little guy practically had to carry him to the cab, where he struggled to open the heavy door and deposit Jack in the back seat. Bo finished off the Seagram's and tossed the bottle to the floor. "Will you look at him?" he said to Henry. They were parked on a corner, half a block from Kiki's apartment, but with a good view of the street. "Always the dandy," Henry said. Jack had on a brown velour fedora and a chinchilla coat that was unbuttoned over a classy blue suit.

  "That coat costs two grand easy," Bo said.

  "Wouldn't know about that," Henry said. "Out of my league."

  Henry and Bo had arrived at Kiki's hours earlier. Not a minute after they'd parked the car, Kiki appeared in her bedroom window wearing flimsy, diaphanous pajama bottoms and nothing else. She stretched for the shade and pulled it down just as Jack showed up behind her, reaching for her. Henry had checked his gun, and Bo had told him to put it away. "Let him get laid one last time," he said to Henry. "She's a beauty. It's the decent thing to do."

  Henry said, "Then we'll take care of him before he has to fuck his wife again. Ah, you're a saint, Bo."

  In truth, Bo was also thinking about '29 and the Monticello Hotel. Kiki had been with Jack then, too, and that hadn't turned out well. At Kiki's apartment on Broeck Street, he made a quick decision to let Jack have his fun and then kill him when he was leaving. He hadn't figured, though, that they'd be at it for hours. By the time Jack finally hit the street, the bottle of Seagram's was empty.

  "Jesus," Henry said. "I'm not too confident in my ability to shoot straight at the moment."

  Bo slapped his own face, hard, in an effort to sober up. He opened the car windows to let in the cold. "Follow the cabbie," he said to Henry. "See where he takes him."

  The cab carried Jack to 67 Dove Street, a two-story red brick edifice with a wooden stoop. Henry followed with the car lights off and twice sideswiped parked cars on the way. "Jesus," he said both times and then broke into laughter, like sideswiping a car was the funniest thing in the world. Bo stuck his head out the window to sober up. By the time Henry pulled the car onto the sidewalk in a drunken attempt at parking, Bo's eyes were watering from the cold and the wind, but his head wasn't swimming quite so badly. Down the block, he watched the cabbie help Jack out of the car and up the wooden steps and then unlock the door for him when Jack couldn't manage it.

  "You think Jack spotted us?" Bo asked Henry.

  "Jesus," Henry said, "the man can't walk without falling down, let alone spot a car tailing him with the lights off."

  "I suppose so." Bo took his gun from its holster and popped in a new magazine. Down the street, the door at the top of the steps opened and the cabbie hurried to his car and sped away, in a rush to get somewhere. "Don't underestimate the man," he added as he tucked his gun away. "We're not the first thought they had Jack Diamond in their sights."

  "Maybe we should take the tommy guns." Henry laughed as if the thought of shooting up Jack Diamond with tommy guns was hilarious.

  "Cut it out," Bo said, "and sober up!"

  "Jesus," Henry said. "We'd better be standing right on top of Jack when we do the job. Between the two of us, we couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a cannon."

  "Shut up," Bo said, and he pulled his coat tight around him. "Come on."

  At the top of the wooden steps, Bo tried the door and found it was unlocked. He pushed it open and stepped into a quiet hallway at the foot of a flight of carpeted stairs. Henry came in behind him and closed the door without making a sound. The men, side by side in the musty darkness, were both holding on to something to keep themselves upright and stable: Bo grasped a wooden banister and Henry held the doorknob. The darkness and the nature of their visit hadn't made them sober but had quieted them. Bo unholstered his gun and Henry did the same. Together they climbed the stairs. Each time a step creaked, they stopped and crouched and aimed their guns to the top of the stairway, into the dark, prepared for Jack to appear out of the shadows—but neither Jack nor anyone else appeared and they reached the top of the stairs and walked past a potted fern and into a dingy little room where Jack lay on his back astride a narrow bed in his underwear.

  Bo glanced about the room, amazed at the tawdry surroundings: the cheap dresser and ancient, scratched oval mirror with its backing peeling away around the edges; the thick, smoked-stained shades over the windows; the warped floorboards and dingy walls and cracked plaster ceiling. Jack's pants were on the floor next to his shoes. The rest of his clothes, including the chinchilla coat and velour hat, were piled on top of the dresser or lay on the floor between the dresser and the bed. On a straight back chair next to the bed, a German Luger lay with its barrel pointed at Jack's head. Stretched out on the bed, his head precisely in the center of a pillow, Jack looked stunned as a fish that had just been clubbed, his mouth open and pulling in chunks of air, his hair disheveled, his arms at his sides, palms up and open as if in ecstatic prayer. Henry waited at the foot of the bed, his pistol pointed at Jack, looking to Bo for the go-ahead.

  Bo took up a position next to Henry and pointed his pistol at Jack's
head. "What's Jack Diamond doing in a dump like this?" he asked Henry.

  "Must be where he comes to sleep it off before going home to the wife."

  "Think we should wake him?"

  "What for? Do you want to say good-bye?"

  Bo said, "Nah," aimed, and got off four shots at Jack's head. Alongside him, Henry squeezed off two shots. When the gunfire was over, Henry backed away and toward the door, but Bo went around the bed to get a better look. There were three bullets in Jack's head and three in the wall over the bed. He put his gun back in its holster, took Jack's Luger from the chair, shoved it under his belt, and followed Henry out of the room and to the stairs. Midway down the steps he stopped. "Let's make sure," he said. Though a moment ago he had leaned over Jack's body and counted three bullet holes in his face and skull, he was suddenly unsure that they'd killed him. He had after all shot Jack in the head once before, only to send him off to Europe for a ocean cruise. "I been waiting a long time for this," he said to Henry, and he started back up the stairs. "Oh, hell, that's enough for him," Henry said. He snatched Bo by the arm and pulled him back down the steps toward the front door.

  On the sidewalk, on the way to the car, Henry tripped over his own feet and went sliding to the curb. Bo, laughing at Henry, yanked him by the collar, got him standing upright, and then forgot about the curb and fell to the street himself, pulling Henry down with him. By the time they finally got to the car, both men were beside themselves laughing. They drove away like that, amidst their own laughter, partly from the foolishness of their drunken acrobatics and partly from relief at having finished the job that had brought them to Albany in the first place. When they were gone and the street was empty, a light snow started to fall, a scattering of flakes drifting down out of the cold and dark.

  5:30 p.m.

  At the kitchen table, Gina peeled a potato, chopped it into big chunks,

  and tossed the chunks into a Pyrex oven dish. She was still in her work clothes, a prim blue skirt and white blouse that ft snugly and were somehow demure and sexy at the same time. Freddie and Loretto sat across from her, both of them smoking and sipping coffee from a pair of matching white cups and saucers, both in blue work shirts and khaki slacks, looking like brothers in their matching attire, Freddie the muscular one, Loretto the handsome one. They were talking about their workdays and laughing at each other's stories. Mama, at the kitchen counter beside the stove slicing up a chicken, occasionally added a comment or asked a question, as did Augie and Mike, who were in the living room, on the couch, smoking with their feet up on the table, drinking coffee and reading the day's papers with their headlines about the early-morning murder of Jack Diamond. Mike was the only one in a suit and tie. Though it was bitter cold outside, the apartment was cozy thanks to an unregulated radiator in the living room that kept pumping out heat, its constant gurgling and clacking a background noise that no one seemed to hear.

  Every once in a while, Loretto would sneak a glance at Mama, who mostly stood with her back to him. She wore an apron tied around a plain housedress and occupied herself with preparing the chicken, smothering it in olive oil and seasoning it with spices and herbs. He had spent the night at Gina's and only gotten back around five in the morning. He had settled on the couch in hopes of catching at least a little sleep before work but instead he had lain there quietly, lost in his thoughts, watching the morning approach in tiny increments as the sky outside the living room window grew lighter. Mama was up by 5:30, which was early for her. Loretto pulled a blanket to his chin and pretended to be sleeping, but Mama came into the living room, ran her fingers gently through his hair to wake him, and asked what he wanted for breakfast. When Loretto opened his eyes, he found Mama looking down at him with a mischievous smile. "You gotta be hungry," she said. "You work up a good appetite, I hope?" She patted him on the cheek and held up three fingers. "I make you three eggs this morning," she said and laughed. In the kitchen, at the stove, she turned around and added, "And some nice big sausage!" And again she laughed before going about putting up the coffee. Loretto hadn't been able to look at her since without feeling a tinge of embarrassment.

  In the living room, Augie tossed his newspaper down in disgust. "All this news about Diamond, you'd think the pope got shot."

  "Eh!" Mama yelled. "Watch your mouth!"

  "They suspect it was Dutch Schultz's boys," Freddie said, twisting around to face Augie. "They're geniuses, these news guys."

  "Don't be jumpin' to conclusions," Mike said. He put his paper aside and went about slipping off his shoes. "I'm hearing some talk it might have been the cops up in Albany. They didn't like it that he got off, so they took care of the problem themselves."

  "Yeah?" Freddie asked. "Who's sayin' that?"

  When Mike didn't answer, Gina said, "I hear from Maria that this is bad for Vince."

  Mike said, "What's Maria know about it?"

  "Whatever Patsy knows."

  "Is that right?" Loretto pulled his chair out from the kitchen table so that he could talk to Mike without contorting himself. "What's Diamond got to do with Vince?"

  "According to Patsy," Gina said, "Diamond was going to be the alibi. He was testifying that Vince was with him up in Albany that day."

  Loretto, along with everyone else except Mama, turned to Mike for confirmation.

  Mike said, "Patsy talks too much."

  "Yeah, so, is it true?" Freddie held his coffee up and waited for Mike to answer before taking another sip.

  Mike nodded. "I was in the courtroom today when the news hit about Jack. You should have seen the look on Lottie's face when I told her."

  Augie said, "You told her?"

  "We're sitting next to each other up in the balcony, all of a sudden everybody's whisperin' and some of the news guys are bolting for the door."

  Augie said, "Yeah, so?"

  "So shut up and let me finish!"

  "Basta!" Mama yelled without turning from the counter.

  Augie motioned for Mike to go on.

  "So I got up and asked around. When I went back to Lottie and told her, first her face went red, then it went white, then she's holding her belly like she's in pain."

  "Jeez," Gina said. "Almost makes me feel sorry for her."

  "So is it that bad for Vince?" Freddie asked. "What's he lookin' at now, the chair?"

  "It ain't looking good for him now," Mike said, "that's for sure."

  At the kitchen counter, Mama slapped a knife down hard enough to get everyone's attention. When she turned around, she said softly, "I don't like this talk. Enough."

  Mike said, "Freddie's the one started it."

  Freddie said, "Sorry, Mama."

  "Listen," Gina said. She carried the Pyrex dish stuffed with potatoes, carrots, and onions to the counter and placed it in front of Mama. "Long as we're all here like this . . ." She paused, waiting till she had everyone's attention. "I talked to Balzarini at the funeral parlor today. They're making all the arrangements for us with the cemetery. Is that okay with everybody? Because if anybody's got any special requests . . ."

  "Not me," Augie said. "Let Balzarini handle it. He knows what he's doing."

  Mama carried the Pyrex bowl of chicken and vegetables to the oven. "I talk to the people at the cemetery," she said, sheepishly. "We got a family plot. Enough for everybody."

  Gina watched her mother as she slid the chicken onto the oven rack and checked the temperature. "All right," she said. "If that's what you want, Ma."

  Mama turned from the oven to face Gina. Her eyes were watery. "Thank you, Gina," she said. "You're a good daughter."

  Gina said, "Excuse me," but instead of going into the bathroom, which was what everyone expected, she went into the boys' room. A minute later, they all heard her climb the ladder and go up to the roof.

  Mama turned to Loretto. "It's freezing out!"

  "I'll go talk to her," Loretto said, and he followed Gina to the roof. On his way up, he took his own overcoat from the closet and Gina's from Fred die's bed, w
here she usually tossed it when visiting. He found her standing by the ledge alongside the empty pigeon coop. Her arms were crossed under her breasts and she was shivering. It was mostly dark out and the lights from the nearby buildings cast a yellow glow over the rooftops and down into the alley. He draped her coat over her shoulders and she turned to him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and pressed her face to his chest. She asked, "How's Mama?"

  "I think she's grateful," Loretto said. "How are you?"

  Instead of answering, Gina tilted her head to Loretto and they kissed. "I think I'm doing the right thing, going along."

  "Sure," Loretto said, "but how do you feel about it?"

  "I don't know." Gina looked up to the sky as a light snow started to fall.