The Gangster (18 page)

“Kid Kelly” Ghiottone heard a flood. A street main had burst, some hundreds-year-old pipe laid by the Dutchmen who used to run the city, rusting, rotting, thinner and thinner, and suddenly exploding from the pressure. Water was everywhere, spouting out of the cobblestones, flooding basements. He would drown, locked in the cell, deep in Branco’s cellar. But before he drowned, he would drink.

“Wake up, my friend.”

He woke to the same smell he had fallen asleep to—mouldering sausage and the stink of his own sweat and despair. There was no broken main, no flood. Not a drop of water. He was dreaming. But he
heard
water. Opening his eyes and looking about blearily, he saw Branco standing outside the cell again. He was pouring water from a pitcher into a glass. Again.

“It is time to drink.”

Ghiottone tried to say “Please.” His mouth and throat were dry as sand. His tongue was stiff, and he could barely make a noise, only a croak, like a consumptive old drunk crawling in the gutter.

“Who asked you to hire a killer?”

Ghiottone tried again to speak. His tongue filled his mouth.
No sound could escape. It was buried in dust. Branco put the pitcher and the glass down on the floor. Ghiottone stared through the bars at the glass. He saw a drop hanging from the lip of the pitcher. The drop looked enormous. Branco handed him a pencil and a piece of paper.

“Write his name.”

Ghiottone could not remember how many of Branco’s pencils he had broken, nor how many sheets of paper he had ripped. He grabbed the pencil and paper and watched, astonished, as the pencil moved across the paper, scribbling, “He will not know any more than me.”

“One thing at a time,” said Branco. “His name. Then water.”

Ghiottone wrote “Adam Quiller.”

Antonio Branco read it. Adam Quiller, a fat, little middle-aged Irishman he’d seen scuttling about the district carrying messages from the alderman. Quiller did Ghiottone favors in exchange for the saloon keeper delivering Italian votes on Election Day.

“Of course. I could have guessed and saved us both such trouble. But I had to know. Here, my friend. Drink!”

He opened the bars and offered the glass.

“Kid Kelly” Ghiottone lifted it in both hands and threw back his head. The water splashed on his lips and ran down his chin. What entered his mouth and spilled down his throat was cold and delicious. He tipped the glass higher for the last drop.

Antonio Branco watched the saloon keeper’s elbows rise until they were parallel with his shoulders. The movement caused his vest to slide above the waistband of his trousers. His shirt stretched tight over his ribs.

“Have another.”

He took the glass and poured it full again. “Tell me,” he said, still holding the glass, “how would the killer be told the target?”

Ghiottone, thoroughly beaten, could not meet his eye. He tried to speak and found he could whisper. “When you give me the killer’s name, I pass it up to—”

“To Adam Quiller.”

Ghiottone nodded.

Branco frowned. “Then the target is passed all the way back down the chain? That sounds slow, cumbersome, and not private enough. I don’t believe you are telling me all the truth.”

“I am, padrone. They didn’t say how, but it would not come down the chain. They have some other way of telling him the target.”

“And the money? The fifty thousand? How does that come?”

Ghiottone straightened up. “Through me. They will send me the money when the job is done. My job is to give it to you.”

Branco handed him the glass, saying, “That makes you a very valuable man.”

Ghiottone lifted it in both hands and threw back his head. This time, most of the water entered his mouth. He swallowed, reveling in the coldness of it, and tipped the glass to finish it.

Branco stuffed the body in a sugar barrel and nailed it shut and went to his stable, where he woke up an old Sicilian groom and ordered him to hitch up a garbage cart and dump the barrel in the river. Then he went hunting for Adam Quiller.

Late in the afternoon, when the Van Dorn detective bull pen filled with operatives preparing for the night by perusing the day’s newspapers and exchanging information, Isaac Bell sat alone, opening and closing a pocket knife, reviewing notes in the memo book open beside him, and listening.

“
Tribune
says the Harbor Squad found “Kid Kelly” Ghiottone floating in the river.”

“Looks like the Wallopers got some back.”

“Why would the Wallopers do Ghiottone? He didn’t run with Salata.”

“He was Italian, thereby permitting the Wallopers to demonstrate they, one, are enraged about their dope being lifted, and, two, have the guts to snatch him out of Little Italy. His body was a mess, according to the paper; looked like he was beat with hatchets.”

“That is not what happened,” said Isaac Bell.

“Thought you were napping, Isaac. What do you mean?”

“Ghiottone wasn’t beat up. At least not when he was alive.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Barrel staves were floating around the body.”

Every detective in the bull pen lowered his newspaper and stared at Isaac Bell.

“Meaning, they dumped the body in a barrel,” said Mack Fulton.

“And a ship hit the barrel,” said Wally Kisley.

“The steel-hulled, five-mast nitrate bark
James P. Richards
,” said Bell. “Outbound for Chile. According to the Harbor Squad.”

Bell continued practicing with the pocket knife. Mack Fulton voiced a question. “Can I ask you something, Isaac?”

“Shoot.”

“Your criminal cartel theory is driving you around the bend, and the Boss is all over you about the President.”

“I’m aware I’m busy,” said Bell. “Which is why I depend on you boys’ invaluable assistance. What do you want to know?”

“Being so engaged, what made you query Roundsman O’Riordan about an Eye-talian saloon keeper floating in the river?”

“What do you think?”

“Because,” Kisley answered for Fulton, “Isaac thinks Ghiottone is Black Hand.”

Bell shook his head. “That’s not what I got from Research, and they got their info straight from Captain Coligney, who used to ramrod the Mulberry Street Precinct. Ghiottone was a Tammany man—so what strikes me is, somebody’s got it in for Tammany Hall. Adam Quiller was tortured and murdered last Saturday; Harry Warren says he was Alderman King’s heeler. And this guy Lehane, Alderman Henry’s heeler, was also tortured.”

“Those reformers are getting meaner every day,” said Walter Kisley.

Bell joined the laughter. Then he said, “Both heelers were finally killed with a stiletto.”

“I didn’t see that in the paper.”

“You’ll see it tomorrow. Eddie Edwards just spoke with the coroner. The papers will go wild when they see all three victims connected by a stiletto.”

“How about connected by a Tammany boss under investigation who’s killing off witnesses?” asked Kisley.

“Not likely. Bribing witnesses and jurors is more a boss’s strategy. But here’s the thing that strikes me. Look at the order of when they were killed—each stiletto victim stood a rung higher on the ladder of political power—Ghiottone, at the bottom; then Quiller, a heeler and block captain, one step up; then Lehane, the district election leader’s heeler. Makes me wonder who’s next.”

“District leader?”

“More likely his heeler.”

Helen Mills rushed into the bull pen. Detectives straightened neckties, smoothed hair, and brushed crumbs from their vests. She spotted Bell and handed him a small envelope.

“What’s this?”

“Claypool.”

Bell slit it open with his knife. Out fell a photograph, so recently developed it smelled of fixer. The picture was slightly blurred, as Claypool was turning his face, but it was him for sure, and anyone who knew the camera-shy lawyer would recognize him.

“Where’d you get this?”

“I snapped it. Some girls from school came into town. We
pretended we were tourists, and I snapped him while snapping them, when he left his office for lunch.”

Bell slipped it into his memo book. “Nicely done, Helen. Take the girls to Rector’s Lobster Palace. Tell Charlie it’s on me and I said to give you the best table in the house.”

Detectives watched her leave.

Fulton said, “Quiller four days ago. Then Sullivan, Lehane’s heeler, yesterday.”

“Working their way up to a full-fledged alderman,” said Kisley.

Isaac Bell put down the knife and picked up his fountain pen. “Which of them are under investigation?”

“Which ain’t?” asked Kisley, holding up the
Times
with a front page column headline that read

TWO ALDERMEN HELD IN BRIBERY SCANDAL

“Of the forty crooks on the Board of Aldermen, James Martin’s in deepest at the moment. Alderman Martin was always looking for patronage. Ten years if convicted, and sure to be convicted. Word is, he won’t make bail.”

“Why can’t an alderman make bail? The whole point of serving on the Boodle Board is to get rich.”

“Broke,” called Scudder Smith, who was nursing a flask in the corner. “Lost it all to a gal and poker.”

Bell said, “Are you sure about that, Scudder?”

Scudder Smith, a crackersjack New York reporter before Joseph Van Dorn persuaded him to become a detective, said, “You can take it to the bank.”

“Hey, where you going, Isaac?” asked Kisley.

The tall detective was already on his feet, pocketing the knife and his memo book, clapping on his hat, and striding out the door. “Criminal Courts Building. See if the gal and the gamblers left Alderman Martin anything to trade for bail.”

Midway through the door, he paused.

“Harry?”

“What’s up?” asked Harry Warren.

“Would you go downtown and find a way to shake hands with Antonio Branco?”

Harry Warren exchanged mystified glances with Mack Fulton and Wally Kisley. “Sure thing, Isaac. Care to tell me
why
I’m going to shake hands with Antonio Branco?”

“Do it and I’ll tell you why,” said Isaac Bell. “Just make sure he’s not wearing gloves.”

Alderman James Martin shielded his face from the newspaper artists with a hand clutching a half-smoked cigar while an assistant district attorney told the magistrate that he should be jailed in the West 54th Street Police Court Prison unless he put up a bond of $15,000. The DA’s sleuth who had arrested him on the Queensboro Bridge after he left the Long Island City stone mason’s yard, where he had received the money, stood smirking in the doorway. Thankfully, thought Martin, the DA had set the bribe trap in a stone yard, where he had legitimate reason to be. He was a building contractor, after all, wasn’t he, like many a New York City alderman. He prayed the magistrate would buy
that defense at least enough to reduce his bail to an amount low enough to borrow.

“Twelve five-hundred-dollar bills,” the assistant DA raved on. “One for each of his fellow aldermen he would pay off to shift their votes on an issue critical to the health and well-being of every man, woman, and child in New York.”

Alderman Martin’s lawyer asked that his client be admitted to a more reasonable bail. Martin waited to hear his fate. Home for supper or weeks in jail.

The magistrate fixed bond at $10,000. The DA’s assistant protested that it was too low, that Martin would run away, but it was, in fact, far more than he could raise, and the alderman pleaded with the magistrate, with little hope.

“Your Honor, I’m not able to furnish a bond of ten thousand.”

“The charge constitutes a felony. If convicted, your sentence could be ten years and a five-thousand-dollar fine. Ten thousand dollars bail is reasonable. I can reduce it no further.”

“I don’t have ten thousand—I had six thousand, but the DA sleuths took it.”

The magistrate’s eyes flashed. “The District Attorney’s detectives did not ‘take’ the money. They confiscated
evidence
, which happened to be in bills marked ahead of time to ascertain whether you would accept a bribe.”

“That money was given to me in connection with a business deal.”

“The nature of that business deal led to your arraignment.”

“I’m a contractor. It was an ordinary business consideration
involving the supply of stone. I am not in the bribe line of business.”

“You will have opportunity to assert that at your trial. Bail is fixed at ten thousand dollars.”

There was a sudden commotion at the back of the small courtroom and the alderman turned hopefully toward it. He had been telephoning friends all afternoon, begging for bail money. Maybe one of them had had a change of heart.

A message was passed to Martin’s attorney, who addressed the magistrate. “Your Honor, I have a bondsman present. He will offer properties at 31 and 32 Mulberry Street as security for Alderman Martin’s ten-thousand-dollar bail.”

Isaac Bell bounded up the stairs to the bond room in the Criminal Courts Building and told the clerk, “I presume the court will accept my check on the American States Bank as bond for Alderman Martin.”

“We’ll accept an American States Bank check. But Alderman Martin is already free on bond.”

“Where’d he go?”

The clerk shrugged. “Somebody sprung ’im.”

Bell palmed a ten-dollar bill and slipped it to the clerk. “I was informed that Alderman Martin was running out of the kind of friends who would put up ten thousand.”

“You were informed correctly,” said the clerk.

“Any idea who paid the bond?”

“Fellow put up a couple of houses on Mulberry Street.”

“Mulberry? That’s in the Italian colony, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Isn’t Martin’s district in Queens?”

“Until they lock him up in Sing Sing.”

“He’s really on the ropes, isn’t he?”

“Word is he’s in hock to his eyeballs and run out of favors. The man’s got nothing left.”

Bell palmed another ten. “You must see a lot of strange goings on.”

“Oh yes.”

“Who would risk two houses betting that Martin wouldn’t jump bail?”

“Somebody with more money than sense.”

“What do you suppose they’d get out of it?”

“Something the Alderman still has.”

Bell felt someone watching him. He looked around. “Is that fellow leaning on the door jamb a DA’s detective?” he asked the clerk.

“Detective Rosenwald. He nailed Martin.”

Bell walked up to Rosenwald. “Let me save you some trouble. I’m Isaac Bell, Van Dorn Agency. And I was asking that court clerk what I’m about to ask you.”

Rosenwald said, “I’ll save
you
some trouble by telling you don’t try to grease
my
palm.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Bell. “But I would like to buy you a drink.”