Jimmy the Stick (21 page)

I was still pleased with myself later when I gimped into Carl Spinoza's place, sat at the bar, and ordered a celebratory beer.

In the mirror, I could see Carl at a table in the back. He was talking to Vincent Coll and Sammy Spats Spatola. Actually, he was doing more listening than talking, and it looked like he didn't care for what he was hearing.

Coll and Spatola had gone to work for Dutch Schultz by then, trying to intimidate speaks into buying his crappy beer. If their “salesmanship” didn't work, they beat up reluctant bar owners. I'd heard they were sticking to the Bronx, where Dutch did most of his business. Nobody said anything about Manhattan.

When they got up to leave, Coll said, “We'll come back next week. You can tell us then.” Carl looked like he'd eaten something that disagreed with him.

I turned on the barstool, and they saw me for the first time. Spatola paid no attention and there was only the smallest hint of recognition on Coll's face. It had been five years since Egg Harbor.

“Jimmy Quinn, what the hell are you doing here?” Vinnie finally said, smiling like he was trying to be friendly.

I smiled back just as sincerely. “Having a beer.”

“You still work with the Bug and Meyer mob?”

“Now and then.”

Spatola took another look, and I could tell he remembered who I was. “Guess you ain't delivering any more messages for Rothstein.” He and Coll snickered at what they thought was a private joke.

After they left, I talked to Carl Spinoza for a long time.

The next day, I went to Lansky's garage and sat down with him in his office.

He said, “Hell of a thing about A. R,” and we commiserated for a while about him and Mother Moon. Nobody was sure whether Rothstein was shot because he'd welshed on a bet or been in on a heroin deal that went bad. It could have been either. I didn't say anything about what I had seen.

Lansky nodded at my stick. “I heard you busted your leg. That's a tough break too.”

“My running days are over but I can still get around. Do you want me to make my deliveries?”

“Sure. It doesn't matter that you can't run. Use a car and a driver from now on.”

That's more or less what I expected him to say. Lansky and I weren't exactly friends, not like he and Charlie were friends, but we always got along and somehow understood each other. Part of it was because we were both short. We knew what it was like to be the smallest guy in the room and what you had to do to keep the big guys in line. The other part of it was that I never stole from him. Over the years, he had me deliver hundreds of packages of cash, maybe thousands. I have no idea how much money it added up to. But Mother Moon taught me well. There are some people you can steal from and there are some you don't steal from. I knew the difference, and I knew that nobody ever made a living stealing from Lansky.

“There's something else I need to talk to you about,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I talked to Carl Spinoza last night. He's ready to sell his place and retire. I'd like to buy it from him.”

Lansky looked skeptical. “Why? I hear he's losing money.”

“He is. There's nothing special about his joint, and I'll change that. I think it could do pretty good if the booze was improved, you know, nothing but the best. I mean if you want a fancy floor show or an expensive dinner and dancing, there are dozens of places right there in the neighborhood and a hundred more uptown. But if word got out that Spinoza's speak was under new management, serving nothing but the best, straight off the boat . . .”

Lansky nodded. “Yeah, you might have something there.”

“Could I buy direct from you and Charlie?”

He thought before he answered. “Sure, but don't expect much of a discount. Do you have any idea how much we make when we cut this stuff?”

“Hell, I'm going to charge whatever the market will bear. When can I take my first shipment?”

Thus I came to own a speak.

But first I asked around at some of the jewelers on Canal Street, and I got about eleven grand for some of Mother Moon's stones. They turned out to be uncut diamonds. I had some membership cards printed that said “Quinn's Place” even though most people kept calling it Spinoza's. I talked to cops who patrolled the street, and told them I'd be adding an extra fin to what Carl had been handing over. Of course, they were welcome inside anytime. I wanted them to know I was planning to run a quiet place, just like Carl. So Frenchy, Fat Joe, and I went over the inventory and threw out the worst of the rotgut after we got the first truckload from Lansky. Then we figured out new prices, cut the fare on the old but drinkable stuff, and jacked it up for the new name brands. Funny thing, we wound up keeping King's Ransom scotch, one of the most heavily doctored brands, because so many guys had developed a taste for the stuff.

I figured I had a decent shot at making a go of it. After all, the standard complaint about neighborhood speaks was “the liquor's rotten but it's easy to get to.” This place was less than half a block off Broadway. Everybody knew it.

When Vinnie Coll and Spats Spatola returned, they weren't happy. That happened the next Monday afternoon. I was at the back table with my newspapers spread out in front of me.

“You still here, Quinn?” Spatola said as they sat down without being asked to. “Where's Spinoza? We got business to discuss.”

Vinnie's suit was muddy brown, Spats's was a big blue-and-white houndstooth pattern. It hurt your eyes to look at them sitting close together.

I put down the paper. “Carl decided to retire. I'm the new owner. What'll you have? First round's on the house. Frenchy, bring these gents a couple of Bushmills.”

Smiling, Frenchy brought over three drinks, then busied himself behind the bar. I raised my glass.
“Salut.”

Coll tossed back the whiskey and was surprised by it. “Hey, this is the real McCoy.”

“We're only selling the best.”

“Who's your supplier?”

“I'm buying direct from Lansky and Luciano.”

Coll said, “We had a deal with Spinoza. He was going to take our beer.”

“I'm sticking with Owney. We've got Madden's No. 1.”

Spatola unbuttoned his coat, leaning back in his chair, letting the coat fall open to show off two big shiny .45s in shoulder holsters. He and Coll grinned at each other.

“You should give our beer a try. That's what Carl was gonna do.”

“No.”

“You're not giving us a fair shot. That's not good business.” Spatola flipped his coat open wider.

“What the hell is this, Vinnie? You think Spats showing off his big guns is gonna scare me into buying your cheap-ass needled beer?”

I picked up the Detective Special I had under the newspapers and pointed it at Spats's head.

“You've got one second to close your coat.” I cocked the pistol. Behind the bar, Frenchy pulled back the hammer on his hog leg.

Coll turned around to find himself looking down the business end of the huge pistol. He said, “Button your coat, Spats.”

“Now,” I said reasonably, “I plan to run a nice quiet place here. You're welcome to come back as customers; just leave your guns outside. We got the same rules Owney sets at the Cotton Club. No guns, no fighting. Patrolman Norris and Patrolman Cheeks cover this block. They're outside now, looking after your car. I told them you'd be coming, and I wanted to be sure they know who you were.”

Now, I've got to admit, that was a really stupid, show-off move. You don't pull a gun on a guy to threaten him. You pull a gun on a guy to shoot him. But in those days, Vinnie hadn't yet gone completely crazy, and if you could get him to pay attention, you could reason with him. He didn't have anything to gain by shooting me that afternoon, and within weeks he had broken with the Dutchman anyway. He tried to set up his own beer business and started the war that would get him killed.

That was the last time I saw Coll until the night I fingered him to Owney. Spats and I weren't done with each other yet.

VALLEY GREEN, NEW JERSEY

SATURDAY MARCH 5, 1932

Mrs. Pennyweight sipped her scotch and said, “So you turned down Walter because you hurt your leg. And then your mother died and you opened a speakeasy. Did Mr. Coll and, what was his name, Mr. Spatini, threaten you again?”

“Spatola. No, not long after his visit to me, Vinnie Coll and Dutch Schultz parted company, and then it became clear to everybody that Vinnie was nuts, completely crazy.”

“Is he the ‘Mad Dog' you and Mrs. Conway were talking about?” Connie Nix said, finally tasting her drink.

“Yeah, and everybody knows what happened to him.”

“I don't.”

“Neither do I,” said Mrs. Pennyweight, holding out her glass. I made another drink and refreshed Connie's with a little ginger ale.

“OK, Vinnie got arrested on a Sullivan Act beef. The cops caught him with a concealed weapon. Dutch made the ten-thousand-dollar bail for him, but Vinnie skipped, and Dutch was out ten G's. At the same time, if you can believe this, Vinnie demanded a cut of Dutch's beer business. He wanted to be a partner! I know it makes no sense, but that's the way Vinnie was. Dutch told him to screw off, pardon my language, and Vinnie answered by killing one of his top guys, Vincent Barelli, and his girlfriend, May. That did it for the Dutchman, who's pretty close to full-tilt crazy himself. He sent some guys to Harlem looking for Coll. When they couldn't find him, they killed his brother Pete. Vinnie went even more nuts when he heard about it. After his brother got clipped, Vinnie declared war on Dutch's operation and killed about half a dozen of Dutch's guys.”

Both women looked horrified.

“Dutch put a fifty-thousand-dollar price tag on Vinnie's head. Dead only. Now it was serious. One day Vinnie spotted Joey Rao, one of Dutch's men, on the sidewalk in Spanish Harlem. So Vinnie and two other guys drove by in a car and opened up with everything they had, spraying the whole street with shotguns and pistols. Only, Joey had already seen Vinnie's car, and ducked out of sight. So Vinnie and his guys hit five kids playing on the sidewalk. Four of 'em were wounded, some pretty bad. One was killed, a kid named Mikey something.”

I heard Connie Nix catch her breath.

“Now, even with Dutch's guys killing Vinnie's guys and vice versa, neither the cops nor the politicians really cared. Another dead bootlegger, no great loss. But when a kid gets killed, everything changes. This guy named Brecht claimed to have seen it all and fingered Vinnie. The papers started calling him a baby killer, and the mayor said he was a mad dog. And then everybody was looking for him. A sane person might have decided this was a good time to head for Canada or Mexico. But not Vinnie. Instead, he kidnapped Owney Madden's pal, Big Frenchy DeMange, and ransomed him back to Owney for thirty-five grand.”

I turned to Connie Nix. “That's what I was saying before. Vinnie and some other guys I know would kidnap people. But never anybody who might call the cops. You snatch somebody who's already in the business, has the money close at hand, and doesn't want local police or the federal guys involved. For his part, Owney knew that if he came up with the cash, Vinnie would let Big Frenchy go. So he paid up. Vinnie used that money to hire Sam Liebowitz, maybe the best mouthpiece in town, except for Dixie Davis. That was after he got nabbed. They caught up with him and the rest of his guys in a hotel upstate.”

I poured another drink for myself. “So anyway, Vinnie goes to trial. And Liebowitz, the mouthpiece, turned Brecht, the eyewitness, inside out. He convinced the jury that Brecht was lying, that he only wanted the thirty-thousand-dollar reward. Turns out that Brecht had done the same thing in another case, identifying the wrong guy. When it was all over, Brecht was committed to Bellevue and Vinnie walked away a free man. The Reds and the reformers accused the DA's office of intentionally sabotaging their own case. Other guys said that Owney had arranged for Vinnie to get off so he could take care of the Mad Dog himself. I don't know if that's true, but I do know that the word was out, if you saw Vinnie, you called Owney PDQ. And that's what somebody did about a month ago.”

They didn't need to know exactly who that somebody was.

“Again, you'd think that with everybody looking for him, Vinnie would have left town, but he didn't. He stuck around and got spotted one night when he was making a phone call from a drugstore. One of Owney's guys with a Tommy gun caught up with him. According to the papers,” I lied, “he just about cut Vinnie in half right there in the phone booth, before he got in a car and drove away. And the next day, two more of Vinnie's mugs were killed. So after that, do you think anybody in the ‘underworld,' as the papers and radio like to call it, would harm a kid, particularly the Lindbergh baby?”

Mrs. Pennyweight said, “I suppose not.”

Connie Nix said, “For somebody who says he's not a gangster, you sure know a lot of people who get shot.”

I'd never thought of it that way.

SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 1932

VALLEY GREEN, NEW JERSEY

Flora Spencer and Cameron Rivers rolled in at dawn.

I heard the whine of an over-revved engine and was waiting outside the front door when the Pierce-Arrow slid to a stop. Deputy Parker's patrol car was behind them.

Cameron Rivers tottered out first, hoisting another bottle of Veuve Clicquot, and bowed in my direction. “The Sisters of Isadora salute the approaching sunrice . . . sunrise.”

The passenger door banged open. Laughing, Flora tumbled through it, stumbling a bit until she got her balance. She wore a cloche hat and a tan coat with a thick fur collar. When she saw me, she stopped laughing.

“So, you're still here, Walter's little watchdog. I think Teddy and Titus were right about you. I know whose side you're on. Don't think you can pull the wool over my eyes.”