The Gangster (15 page)

Bell pretended to watch the puppets, flailing with their swords, while he continued to scan for faces, hoping to recognize Salata’s underlings. Suddenly, behind him, he heard, “Good evening, Detective.”

Bell turned to face Antonio Branco, who asked with a mocking smile dancing across his mobile face, “What brings you to Little Italy in longshoreman’s attire?”

“A Black Hand gangster named Charlie Salata.”

“You just missed him,” said Branco. “Heavyset man with his arm in a sling, shoving people like he owns the street.”

“I know what he looks like.”

“He went behind the puppets.”

“I saw,” said Bell. “There are too many people. Too many could get hurt.”

“Your innocent Italians,” said Branco. “I’m beginning to believe that you really mean that.”

“Mean what?”

“That you can turn
cafon
and
contadino
into Americans.”

“What are
cafon
and
contadino
?”

“Barefoot peasants.”

“We’ve done it before, we’ll do it again. Meantime, what are
you
going to do for them?”

“I find them work. And I feed them.”

“That’s only a start,” said Isaac Bell. “You’re a man of substance, a
prominente
. What will you do when criminals prey on them?”

“I am not a cop. I am not even a detective.”

“Why don’t you get behind your White Hand Society?”

“That did not work out so well, did it?”

Bell said, “Do it in a bigger way. Put in more money, put in more effort, use your talents. You’re a big business man; you know how to organize. You might even make it a national society.”

“National?”

“Why not? Every city has its Italian colony.”

“What an interesting idea,” said Antonio Branco. “Good night, Detective Bell.”

“Do you remember the knife you pulled on me in Farmington?”

“I remember the knife I opened to defend myself.”

“Was it a switchblade? Or a flick-knife?”

Branco laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“You have the manner of a man born to privilege. Am I correct?”

“Assume you are,” Bell said.

“I laugh because you think an immigrant laborer would dare carry an illegal weapon. Your government called us aliens—still does. A switchblade or a flick-knife would get us beaten up by the police and thrown in jail. It was a pocket knife.”

“I never saw a pocket knife open that fast.”

“It only seemed fast,” said Branco. “You were young and afraid . . . So was I.”

A voice in the dark shocked Tommy McBean out of his sleep.

“What?”

“Listen.”

“Who the hell are you?” McBean reached for the gun under the pillow. It wasn’t there. That’s what he got for going to bed drunk in a strange hotel with a woman he never met before. She was gone like his gun. Big surprise. She had played him like a rube.

Boiling mad, ready to kill with his bare hands, if he could only see the guy, he sat up in bed and shouted, “What do you want?”

“We have cow horns.”

“Oh yeah?” Tommy shot back. “You have my dope? Who the hell are you going to sell it to?”

“We have buyer who pay-a top doll-a.”

The guy talked like an Eye-talian. Another damned guinea. More every day. “Who?”

“Top doll-a.”

“
Who
, damn you?”

“You.”

“Me? What are you talking about?”

“We no steal your heroin.”

“You just said you did.”

“We no steal it. We kidnap it.”

McBean swung his feet to the floor. Cold steel pressed to his forehead. He ignored it and made to stand up. Then he felt a needle prick between his ribs, and the voice in the dark said, “I’m-a four inches from inside your heart.”

McBean sagged back on the bed. “Ransom? You’re holding our dope for ransom?”

“You make-a distributor system. You sell it.”

“You ‘make-a’ war on us.”

The Italian surprised him, saying, “You win-a the war.”

“Better believe it.”

“Not how you think. You make-a Fordham College. You make-a Boston University. Me? Steamer Class for stupid dago.”

“What are you gassin’ about?”

“I have more hungry men than you. Micks move up. Dagos just start. Ten years, you all be college men. Ten years, we own the docks.”

“You’ll never own the docks.”

He laughed. “We make-a side bet. After you pay-a ransom.”

“What if I don’t?”

“We dump drugs in river.”

“Geez . . . O.K. How much?”

“Half value.”

“I gotta talk to my cousin.”

“Ed Hunt said no deal.”

“Ed already said no deal? Then no deal.”

“Hunt died.”

“Ed’s dead?”

“Do we have deal?”

Tommy McBean could not imagine Ed Hunt dead. It was like the river stopped. And now the Wallopers was all on him.

“What killed him?”

“It looked like a heart attack.”

Antonio Branco walked from the waterfront to Little Italy.

They would be bloody years, those ten or so years to take the New York docks. The Irish would not let the theft of their drugs and the killing of Hunt go by without striking back. Chaos loomed and pandemonium would reign.

At Prince Street, he went into Ghiottone’s Café, as he often did. The saloon was going strong despite the hour. Ghiottone himself brought wine. “Welcome, Padrone Branco. Your health . . . May I sit with you a moment?”

Branco nodded at a chair.

Ghiottone sat, covered his mouth with a hairy hand, and muttered, “Interesting word is around.”

“What word?”

“They are shopping for a killer,” said Ghiottone.

“The grocer” can’t fool everyone. Especially a saloon keeper who works for Tammany Hall. Cold proof of the chaos that threatened every dream.

“Why do you tell me this?”

Ghiottone returned a benign smile. “A padrone recruits employees. Pick and shovel men. Stone masons. In your case, you even recruit padrones. Who knows what else?”

“I don’t know why you tell me this.” Did Ghiottone know how close he was walking to death?

“Are you familiar with the English word ‘hypothetical’?” Ghiottone asked.

“What
ipotetico
are you talking about?
”

Ghiottone spread his hands, a signal he meant no harm. “May we discuss
ipotetico
?”

Branco gave a curt nod. Perhaps the saloon keeper
did
know he was close to death. Perhaps he wished he hadn’t started what couldn’t be stopped.

“The pay is enormous. Fifty thousand.”

“Fifty thousand?” Branco couldn’t believe his ears. “You could murder a regiment for fifty thousand.”

“Only one man.”

“Who?”

“They don’t tell me. Obviously, an important figure.”

“And well-guarded. Who is paying the fifty thousand?”

“Who knows?”

“Who is paying?” Branco asked again.

“Who cares?” asked Ghiottone. “It came to me from a man I trust.”

“What is his name?”

“You know I can’t tell you. I would never ask who brought the job to him. Just as he would never ask that man where it came from. In silence we are safe.”

What blinders men wore. “Kid Kelly” Ghiottone seemed unable to imagine that he was linked—like a caboose at the end of a speeding train—to a
titan
who could pay fifty thousand dollars for one death. Branco pictured in his mind jumping from the roof of that caboose to the freight car in front of it, and to the next car, and the next, running over the swaying tops, one to another to another, all the way to the locomotive.

“They came to you,” Branco mused. “Why do they come to an Italian?”

Ghiottone shrugged. Branco answered his own question. The conspirators wanted someone to take the blame, a killer who is completely different from the titan who wanted the victim dead. What better “fall guy” than a crazed Italian immigrant? Or an Italian anarchist.

“What do you say?” asked Ghiottone.

Branco sat silent a long time. He did not touch his glass. At last he said, “I will think.”

“I can’t wait long before I ask another.”

Antonio Branco fixed the saloon keeper with the full force of his deadly gaze. “I don’t believe you will ask another. You will wait while I think about the man you need.”

“Fifty thousand is a fortune,” Ghiottone persisted. “A third or a half as a finder’s fee would still be a fortune.”

Branco stood abruptly.

“What’s wrong?” asked Ghiottone.

“This is no place to discuss such business. Wait ten minutes. Come to the side entrance to my store. Make sure no one sees you.”

Branco made a show of thanking him for the wine and saying good night as he left the crowded saloon.

“Kid Kelly” Ghiottone waited five minutes, then walked across Prince Street and down an alley. Looking about to see that no one was watching, he knocked at the grocery’s side entrance.

Antonio Branco led him through storerooms that smelled of coffee, olive oil, good sausage, and garlic, and down a flight of stairs into a clean, dry cellar. He unlocked a door, said, “No one can hear us,” and led Ghiottone into a room that held an iron cage that looked like the Mulberry Street Police Station lockup from which Ghiottone routinely bailed out fools in exchange for their everlasting loyalty.

“What is this? A jail?”

“If a man won’t repay the cost of getting him to a job in America, he’ll be held until someone pays for him.”

“Ransom?”

“You could call it that. Or you could call it fair trade for his fare.”

“But you hold him prisoner.”

“It rarely comes to that. The sight of these bars alone focuses their mind on repaying their obligation.”

Ghiottoni’s eyes roved over the thick walls and the soundproof ceiling.

Branco said, “But if I must hold him prisoner, no one will hear him yell.”

He exploded into action and clamped Ghiottone’s arm in a grip that startled the saloon keeper with its raw power. Ghiottone cocked a fist, but it was over in a second. Outweighed and outmaneuvered, the saloon keeper was shoved into the cell with a force that slammed him against the back wall. The door clanged shut. Branco locked it and pocketed the key.

“Who asked you to hire a killer?”

Ghiottone looked at him with contempt and spoke with great dignity. “I already told you, Antonio Branco, I can never betray him, as I would never betray you.”

Branco stared.

Ghiottone gripped the bars. “It’s fifty
thousand
dollars. Pay some gorilla to do the job for five—more than he’ll ever see in his life—and keep the rest for yourself.”

Antonio Branco laughed.

“Why do you laugh?” Ghiottone demanded.

“It is beyond your understanding,” said Branco.

Fifty thousand was truly a fortune. But fifty thousand dollars was nothing compared to the golden opportunity that Ghiottone had unwittingly handed him. This was his chance to vault out of “pandemonium” into a permanent alliance with a titan—escape chaos and join a powerhouse American at the top of the heap.

“I ask you again, who brought this to you?”

Ghiottone crossed his arms. “He has my loyalty.”

Branco walked out of the room. He came back with a basket of bread and sausage.

“What is this?”

“Food. I’ll be back in a few days. I can’t let you starve.” He passed the loaf and the cured meat through the bars.

“Kind of you,” Ghiottone said sarcastically. He tore off a piece of bread and bit into the sausage. “Too salty.”

“Salt makes good sausage.”

“Wait!”

Branco was swinging the door shut. “I will see you in a few days.”

“Wait!”

“What is it?”

“I need water.”

“I’ll bring you water in a few days.”