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  Madden pulled his sleeve free from Connor's grasp. To Mike he said, "Vince doesn't need to see him," meaning Connor. "Let him stay in the car till this is over."

  Mike looked to Patsy, who shrugged. "Okay, sure. My friend'll keep him company." He stepped back, giving Madden room to get out of the car as Patsy slid in behind the wheel, changing places with Connor.

  Inside the boarded-up store, Vince sat at a round table in his black overcoat and white scarf, his fedora on the table in front of him. When Madden entered with Mike, Vince gestured to the chair opposite him. "Sorry we couldn't meet someplace more suitable," he said, "but I'm afraid it's dangerous for me to go out in public these days."

  "So I've heard." Madden took his seat at the table. He crossed his arms over his chest and waited. The store was empty except for a few dust-covered cardboard boxes scattered across a grimy floor. What light there was came in around the edges of the boards covering the windows. The two men sat on opposite sides of the table, staring at each other. Behind Madden, Mike leaned against a bare wall, his arms crossed at his waist, a pistol in hand.

  "What's the matter, Big Owney?" Vince said finally. "You look a little pale."

  "No, I don't," Madden said. "If anyone looks pale, it's you." Without giving Vince a chance to reply, he said, "Is my sister okay?"

  "Why would I hurt your sister?"

  "I don't know. Why would you?"

  "I wouldn't," Vince said. "I'd prefer to leave family out it, myself. But ever since Dutch killed my brother . . ."

  "What do you want, Coll? I can't see what good it'll do you to kill me."

  "I'm not planning to kill you, Mr. Madden."

  "Then what am I doing here?"

  "You're too important to kill," Vince continued. "And you're from good Irish stock. I'd prefer to keep you around for the company."

  "Then I'll ask you again," Madden said, "what am I doing here?"

  "But your brother-in-law, that Connor fellow," Vince went on, "I'd take

  him for a one-way ride. I only met him briefly, but I never liked a man with one of those mustaches."

  "What do you want, Coll?"

  Vince pushed his fedora aside. "I want you to understand that I'm not going anywhere, Duke. That's what your friends call you, isn't it? Duke?"

  "My friends call me Owen."

  "Owen, then. I want you to understand that I'll kill your brother-inlaw, I'll kill your sister, I'll kill Frenchy. I'll blow up your clubs, steal your whiskey, and kill your people and their damn pets till you got no choice but to do business with me. That's what you're doing here. So I can look you in the eye and give you that message."

  "I didn't need to see you to get the message," Madden said. "You've been making yourself eminently clear."

  "Good," Vince said. "I don't want all that much. I want to be a partner in your breweries and in the beer business, and I want Dutch Schultz delivered to me—and then of course I want all of Dutch's businesses. That's all I need. Then everything goes back to being nice and peaceful again. That and a cash payment to make up for all the money you and the Combine have cost me. A hundred thousand should do it."

  "Those are your terms?" Madden asked. "You want in on the breweries and the beer and you want Dutch and a hundred grand. And then all this is over with, and we go back to making money without having to worry every time we step out on the street."

  "That's it," Vince said. He put his hands in his pockets. It was cold enough in the abandoned store that the men could see their own breath.

  "I'll tell you a secret," Madden said. "Nobody likes Dutch Schultz."

  "That's not a secret," Vince said. Behind Madden, Mike laughed.

  "This is not something I can do on my own, though. I've got partners."

  "So?"

  "So give me two weeks." Madden pulled his chair closer to Vince. "I'll

  see what kind of a deal I can arrange. Dutch was wrong, going after your brother when he couldn't get to you. The man's a miserable son of a bitch, and everybody knows it."

  "That's my point," Vince said. "Better to work with me. We're the last of the Irishmen." He looked up to Mike and winked at him.

  "Give me two weeks," Madden repeated. "I've got to work it out with my partners and get the cash together. Meanwhile," he said, "lay off my people and my businesses. You're costing me a lot of money."

  "I'll lay off your people and your businesses," Vince said, meaning he wouldn't lay off Dutch and the others. "I'll give you two weeks," he said, "and if you double-cross me, I'm gonna be mad. And then I'll come after you, Mr. Madden." He sat back in his seat. "You don't want that."

  "You're a tough guy," Madden said, and for the first time since he'd entered the empty store, he smiled. "You remind me of myself when I was your age."

  "Yeah?" Vince said. "Somebody kill your brother?"

  "No. But if I had a brother somebody killed, I'd do exactly what you're doing." He extended his hand to Vince.

  Vince looked warily at Madden and then stood and shook hands with him. "Two weeks," he said.

  "Two weeks," Madden answered and then turned to Mike, who escorted him out of the store and back to the car, where he switched places with Patsy and got behind the wheel.

  As Madden drove off, he watched Vince come out of the store with Mike and Patsy on either side of him. Connor was rambling, but Madden didn't hear a word. He was watching Coll standing brazenly on a street corner like he owned the whole city while a small army of men was out hunting for him.

  To his brother-in-law, when he finally stopped talking, Owen said, "Something like this ever happens again, Connor, no matter what they tell you, you've got to figure they plan on killing me. Understand?"

  "Owen—"

  "Then you'll have to choose. If it's between me and Mary, you did the right thing. You had no choice. My friends, of course," he added, "they won't understand. So the next thing you'd need to do is get out of the country. Fast."

  "Owen—"

  "Shut up, Connor." They were already back at his office, and he pulled the car to the curb and cut the engine. "It's not something you need to worry about. I'm just explaining how it is."

  "And why don't I need to worry about it?" Connor asked. "Didn't I just get taken for a ride?"

  "If you'd been taken for a ride," Madden said, "we wouldn't be sitting here talking." The snow was falling heavily now, covering the streets and sidewalks and rooftops. "You don't need to worry about it because only an animal like Coll would pull this kind of stunt. You read the papers. He's a mad dog. And you know what you've got to do with a mad dog, don't you?"

  "That guy, Patsy, he told me you'd be going into business with Coll."

  "I'd rather rip my balls off with my own hands," Madden said. He stepped out of the car into the snow. The wind was picking up and the clouds looked ominous. He leaned down into the car. "Go take care of Mary," he said. "Call me and let me know everything's okay." He closed the door, checked the street, and scurried to the protection of his office doorway. Across the avenue, on a fire-escape landing, someone had hung a line of stuffed animals—bears and rabbits and monkeys—from a clothesline. Their fur was matted, as if they'd gotten soaked somehow and someone had hung them out in the weather to dry. Now they were covered with snow and they looked to Owen like they'd all been executed by hanging and left out to dangle in the wind. He watched them spin and sway. Above him, clouds rolled over the rooftops. He shook off the snow and stomped his feet and went back inside.

  Sunday - January 31, 1932

  10:17 p.m.

  At the new place in Brooklyn, Loretto stretched out in a squarish stuffed chair with high armrests and propped his feet up on a window with a view of the East River. Mike was in the kitchen watching the stove like an expectant father, waiting for a loaf of bread he had made from scratch to finish baking. He stood over the oven with a drink in hand, a bag of tea on the table behind him next to a sawed-off shotgun, a bottle of Scotch, and a copy of the New Yorker they'd inherited with the apartm
ent. Vince had given everyone a day off after Anthony Domini'd taken a bullet in the leg jackin' one of Luciano's shipments of Canadian hooch. Vince had sent him off to a family he knew in West Virginia, all the way up in the hills somewhere, and they were taking care of him till he got back on his feet. The gang had been lucky for weeks, with no more than a few scratches and bruises to account for all the mayhem they'd created while stealing from the Combine, with the exception of Madden, whom they were leaving alone while they waited for him to work out a deal.

  "Look at this!" In the kitchen, Mike pulled his loaf of bread from the oven and carried it on a plate over to Loretto for inspection.

  Loretto leaned over the bread and filled his lungs with the delicious smell of it. "You're a man of many talents."

  Mike laughed and said, "And you're high as a kite." He took the bread back into the kitchen and set it down on a counter to cool. Half to himself and half to Loretto he said, "My mother taught me how to bake bread." He took his seat at the kitchen table and went back to flipping through the New Yorker, stopping to read the cartoons while he sipped his Scotch.

  Loretto had cut back on his drinking and replaced it with smoking tea. He was high at that moment, but it was different from being drunk. He was relaxed and sleepy, though he found himself speeding off along crazy trains of thoughts and memories rather than falling asleep. He thought of Gina and that first night when she'd wanted him to make love to her and he'd refused. He closed his eyes and he could almost feel her leaning in to him, her arms around his neck, pulling him to her for a kiss. He hadn't seen Gina now in weeks. He'd stopped at the docks once, right after Augie's shift let out. He'd worn his coat collar turned up over his ears and his hat pulled down, and he'd found Augie in one of his usual watering holes, drinking by himself in a booth, a newspaper spread out on the table in front of him. Loretto joined him in the booth, sliding onto the bench across from him. Augie looked up, saw who it was, and went back to reading his paper. Loretto said, "Aren't you glad to see me?" and Augie glanced up at him in a way that seemed to Loretto to be pained. Loretto told him he was making enough money with Vince to buy a house somewhere and settle down with Gina once the fighting was over, and Augie listened without comment. When Loretto was done talking, he asked Augie to relay his message to Gina, that he was making enough money to buy a house and settle down with her when the time was right. Augie looked up from his newspaper and spoke as if he hadn't heard a word. "We put ourselves out for you," he said to Loretto. "We took you into our home. We stood up for you." Then he slid out of the booth and left the bar.

  "Hey, Mike," Loretto called into the kitchen. "Roll me another joint, would ya? You're good at it."

  "You don't need another joint," Mike said. "You're high enough."

  "No I'm not," Loretto answered, but when he stood up the room spun around and he was briefly nauseated.

  The apartment was sparsely furnished: a few chairs spread around, a table in the kitchen, mattresses on the floor in the bedrooms. Bare walls. Loretto looked out the window at the gray water of the East River and the expanse of the Williamsburg Bridge, where the lights of subway cars flickered as a train rattled into the city. The snowy weather of the past several weeks had given way to a deep freeze, and the corners of the windows were coated with ice and frost.

  Mike turned a page of the New Yorker. "If it wasn't so cold," he said, "and if I wasn't likely to get my head blown off, I'd be on my way to Madam Crystal's about now."

  "You wouldn't make it through the front door," Loretto said, and then both he and Mike went for their guns at the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. Mike took the shotgun from the table and positioned himself in a corner of the kitchen, protected by a wall but with a shot at the front door. Loretto knelt behind his chair, a big .45 in one hand and a smaller .38 in his pocket. In the hallway, someone knocked three times, paused, knocked twice, paused, and then knocked three times again.

  "Who is it?" Mike said.

  "It's your uncle," Patsy answered, and Mike went to the door, let Patsy in, and quickly locked the door behind him.

  "What are you doing here?" Loretto put his .45 back in its holster.

  "I'm staying with you guys now. I think I got spotted at my place." Patsy had his coat collar turned up, a long scarf wrapped around his neck, and a pair of newspapers under his arm. "Who's making bread?" he asked as he took off his gloves.

  "I am," Mike said. "You want some?"

  "Sure. I'll have a slice." Patsy tossed the newspapers onto the kitchen table. "Get a load of this," he said.

  Mike and Loretto snatched up the papers and Patsy went to the counter and cut himself a slice of bread. "It's still warm," he said, and he took a small bite. "It's delicious."

  On the front page of both papers were pictures of a shot-up bar with two men dead on the floor, one of them an Italian New York City police detective. There'd been a gunfight in a Manhattan bar between "hoodlums from rival gangs." The detective had come in off the street when he'd heard the shooting and gotten himself killed. The other dead guy was identifed only as "a gangster from Chicago." Two men had been in the bar drinking, both papers reported, when four men came in from the street and opened fire on them. The men at the bar drinking were identifed as Giuseppe and Francis Evangelista. Both men had long records of arrest for everything from arson to murder. "It was a shootout," one of the witnesses said. "Two mugs jumped behind the bar and shot it out with those guys come in off the street." The Evangelista brothers escaped through a back door. Neither of them appeared to be injured, though several bystanders caught in the crossfire had been wounded and taken to area hospitals.

  Mike threw the paper down. "Jesus Christ," he said. "Those cafon's went out for a drink? Are they crazy?"

  "I guess they got tired of being cooped up," Patsy said. He took another bite of bread. "This is delicious, Mike."

  "Yeah?" Mike went to the counter and cut himself a piece.

  "A New York City police detective," Loretto said, holding the newspaper like a baton. "Now in addition to Dutch and the Combine, we'll have every cop in the state looking for us."

  "He was an Italian detective," Mike said with his mouth full. "They probably won't care as much."

  "Baloney," Patsy said. "We're in for it now. You guys been outside?" he added. "It's below zero out there."

  Loretto sat at the table and poured himself a drink. "Those guys are tough," he said, meaning the Evangelistas, "but they're crazy. They go to a bar for a drink like a couple of citizens? While Dutch and everybody else is looking for us? Che cazzo?"

  Mike and Patsy laughed. Loretto didn't often curse in Italian. When he did, they found it amusing. "Have some bread," Mike said. He carried the loaf to the table, made a space for it next to the shotgun, and then brought out some butter and jam from the icebox. "It's perfect just with a little butter," he said to Loretto.

  Loretto cut himself a thick slice and then watched as Patsy and Mike did the same. The three men sat at the table in silence, spreading butter on the warm bread. Loretto found that he was famished and could hardly spread the butter quick enough.

  Mike lifted his drink to Patsy and Loretto. "Salut'," he said, "buon' amici," and then he bit into his chunk of bread as Patsy and Loretto did the same.

  11:30 p.m.

  Gina showed Freddie her new phone and wrote down the number for him on a slip of paper. "EV4-4504," she said as she wrote. Maria had the phone installed as soon as she moved in.

  "It's nice," Freddie said. He picked up the heavy black handset, held it to his ear, listened a second to the dial tone, and then replaced it in its cradle. "I've never lived anyplace had its own phone."

  Gina kissed Freddie on the cheek. They were in her kitchen, where a half-dozen of her friends were gathered around the table with its spread of pastries and party foods. She was a little tipsy from mixing wine and liquor, and it made her more animated than usual. More friends were in the living room talking and drinking while Carmen Lombardo's voice came over th
e radio singing "Goodnight Sweetheart." Augie stood alongside the radio talking to one of Maria's girlfriends from work. The party had started out as a girls-only gathering, celebrating Maria moving in with Gina, but then a few girls called their boyfriends and one of Maria's friend's brothers showed up with a few of his friends. When Augie and Freddie knocked on the door, arriving unannounced for a Sunday-evening visit, Augie with a grease-stained pastry box under his arm, she invited them to join the party.

  "Hey, Gina," Freddie said. He was looking into the living room where a girl with short platinum-blond hair leaned against the wall, a wineglass in her hand. She was one of a threesome of young women, two of whom were talking and gesturing while she stood by quietly. "Who's that?"