Jimmy the Stick (23 page)

Gathering the rest of my things—the Detective Special, knucks, money clip, scarf, hat—I realized I was smiling. I really felt excited and charged up because I was doing something I knew how to do. Maybe it was all wrong, but dammit, I was doing something at last.

I heard Catherine Pennyweight open her daughter's door, and listened to their voices. They rose in argument until Flora's door slammed. I met Mrs. Pennyweight in the hall. Looking severe, she said, “Flora will not be joining us. She has other plans.” Her disapproval couldn't have been any more obvious. “Nix will look after little Ethan.”

“Fine. You got a gun?”

She patted her pocket. “Of course.”

I took a flashlight from the library, and waited outside in the cold wind until Oh Boy wheeled the big Duesenberg up to the front door.

Looking confused, he got out of the car still buttoning his black monkey suit and squaring the cap.

“What's going on, Jimmy?”

“I've got some business in town. Mrs. Pennyweight and little Ethan are coming along for the ride. Miss Nix, too.”

That didn't clear things up. “But what're we doing?”

I clapped my old friend on the shoulder. “Take us into the city and we'll work it out from there.”

Mrs. Pennyweight came out, her eyes bright and her cane barely touching the ground as she hurried along. She wore a long overcoat, trousers, and a brimmed hat. Carrying the boy in her arms, Connie Nix had to run to keep up with her. She wore a dark coat and cloche hat. The big car rocked slightly in the cold, hammering wind as Oh Boy held the door open for them.

I got in the back, sitting in the jump seat, a good place to see if anybody followed us. Nobody did on the way out. Connie Nix was wide-eyed and curious. The baby was restless at first, but settled back smiling after his grandmother gave him some drops from a small brown bottle.

She put the stopper back in and said, “Nix, Mr. Quinn has pressing business in the city. I thought it was safer for Ethan to stay with us than to remain in Valley Green. I'm not precisely sure what it is that Mr. Quinn has in mind.”

The two women looked at me for an answer.

It was impossible to explain so I said, “I gotta see a guy and explain some things. Once he understands that I'm on the up and up in resolving this beef I have, he'll say OK and I'll take care of it, maybe tonight, maybe some other time.”

Connie Nix looked like she wasn't buying it. “Does this have anything to do with what you told us last night about Mad Dog Coll?”

“Not that I know of. If I was you two, I would take a powder at a nice place while I—”

“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Pennyweight. “We'll stay with you. I've been assuming that we'd see your speakeasy.”

Oh hell, I thought. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. But I knew damn well that if she wanted to go to my place, she'd go to my place.

Oh Boy retraced the route we'd taken on Wednesday night, through Newark and past the construction of the elevated highway. It started to rain as we entered the tunnel. When we got into the city, I slid open a section of the dividing glass, and told him to go north. It felt familiar and kind of comforting to be back in the slow, honking traffic.

We went uptown on Broadway. The electric signs got larger, taller, and brighter until they almost created a false daylight. Even Mrs. Pennyweight gawked like a tourist. Holding the happy boy tightly, Connie Nix leaned forward, craning her neck to see as much as she could through the light rain. To me that night, imagining the gaudy clutter through her eyes, the city looked a little cheap and bedraggled. For the first time, I didn't see the glittering theater marquees and looming commercial signs. Instead there were chop-suey joints that claimed to be nightclubs, with crowded penny-a-dance halls, cheap pitchmen, and screwy preachers in front of the arcades.

We passed dozens of movie theaters, half of them, it seemed, turned into grind houses that were open twenty-four hours a day, still showing stuff I'd watched years before. And there, in Times Square, the middle of the famous Great White Way, Minsky had turned the Republic Theater into a burlesque house. If only she'd seen the place a few years ago when it was really something. The only thing that remained as impressive as it had ever been was the Wrigley's sign—a full block long, filled with neon peacocks, fountains, and chewing gum. To me, it had always been the grandest thing on the street and it still looked pretty damned good.

We drove by two places where Charlie Lucky and Lansky sometimes hung out, a drugstore and an office building. But they weren't there, so I told Oh Boy to head for the Waldorf-Astoria.

Sounding impatient, Mrs. Pennyweight said, “What
are
you doing?”

I leaned forward and tried to explain. “The people I work with, we've got ways of doing business. I don't belong to anybody's mob, but like I told you, I do a fair amount of work with a couple of guys named Charlie Luciano and Meyer Lansky. I don't exactly have to get their OK to take care of my problem, but they need to know what I'm doing. It wouldn't be so good if they were surprised to hear about it after the fact. That's just the way things are handled.”

She didn't seem to understand but I couldn't make it any clearer.

The Duesenberg pulled up in front of the hotel, with bellboys in monkey suits even fancier than Oh Boy's dashing up to open the back doors. The big car looked like it belonged there.

I slid open the glass. “I don't know how long this is going to take. Why don't you run the ladies once around the park. If I'm not here when you get back, run 'em twice.”

Getting out, I turned back to Mrs. Pennyweight. “Don't worry. You aren't missing anything exciting.”

I walked around the corner to the entrance to the Waldorf Towers on Fiftieth Street. In the lobby, I picked up the house phone and asked for Charles Ross, the name Luciano used at this grand place.

Charlie Workman answered.

“Charlie, Jimmy Quinn. Is Mr. Ross there?”

“Yeah, but he can't talk now. He'll be busy for another thirty, forty minutes.”

It was Saturday night. Charlie liked to take the edge off with one of Polly Adler's girls before he went out for the evening.

“Is Meyer there?”

“Yeah, he's here. You wanna talk to him?”

“Ask if it's OK for me to come up.”

A few seconds later, “Sure. I'll call the desk. It's 2910.”

Luciano's apartment faced the East River. This was the first time I'd been in the place, and I was impressed. It was pretty swanky. The carpet was thick, and the room smelled of perfume and the flowers sitting on a round table. There was a fancy mirrored cabinet on one wall, with its own soft amber light. I could hear a shower running in another room. I knew that Charlie had done all right for himself, but not this good. The suite was a hell of a lot nicer and newer than my room at the Chelsea, providing the kind of class that Rothstein always talked about. This was how rich people lived.

Charlie Workman let me in. He was a big horse-faced guy who always looked kind of sad. In those days he worked as a driver for Luciano, and killed people, should the need for that come up. Sometimes he drove me when I had payoffs to distribute.

Lansky was reading the Sunday
Times
in an armchair by one of the big picture windows that overlooked the river.

“Bad stuff, isn't it, kid,” he said, nodding at the headlines and shaking his head. “Just crazy. Did you hear that Lindbergh's people have been calling
us
? This guy Breckenridge who's running things, he was thinking about taking Capone up on his offer. But Irey, the T-man who set Capone up on the tax rap, told Lindbergh not to bother.” Lansky looked worn out. He was almost always thoughtful and worried because he was a guy who took his responsibilities seriously. But that night something else troubled him, and it showed.

“Are you saying they actually considered letting Capone out of jail?” This development was really too ridiculous for serious people to talk about.

“Not for long. Irey told them that if they really thought ‘underworld' guys were involved, they oughta talk to us. So that's what they did.” He pointed to the front page. “According to the paper, Bitsy Bitz and Salvy Spitale are official go-betweens.”

“They work for Mickey Rosner. He in on this?”

“Yeah, that's what Breckenridge said when he called.”

“Who'd he talk to? Mr. Costello?” Frank Costello handled payoffs to politicians and judges. I made deliveries for him almost every week.

“Yeah, you just missed him.”

“What'd he say?”

Lansky lit a cigarette. The ashtray on the table in front of him was overflowing. “Breckenridge asked if any of our guys were involved. Frank said he didn't think so, and he'd ask around. He made some calls, talked to Longy and some other guys. And then me and Charlie talked it over. There are a few men who might go off on their own on something like this. But nobody's taken a powder. They're all accounted for and they swear they didn't do anything. I mean, hell, it's not like we're the goddamn Army, where everybody follows orders. I just don't think anybody we know had anything to do with it. Frank thinks the kid's probably dead, and I guess he's right. Hell of a thing. You know anything?”

“No, did you hear what happened at my place?”

“Nah, I been out of town. Just got back this afternoon. Tell me about it.” There were two suitcases beside his chair.

Before I could say anything, the bedroom door opened and a cute little blonde came out, adjusting the shoulder straps of a tight pearly-white dress. She said, “Charlie, before we go back to Polly's I gotta . . . Hi, Jimmy, long time no see.”

“Hello, Daphne.” Daphne was one of the youngest and prettiest of Polly Adler's girls. She bent over and kissed me, making sure I got a good look down the front of her dress. We both knew I couldn't afford her, but it was a friendly gesture. She straightened up and said, “Charlie, I need to go by that place where we went that time.”

Workman said, “Sure, Daphne,” and gave her butt a long, appreciative squeeze as they left. I guessed it would be a while before they got back to Polly's.

I gave Meyer the quick version of what the big cop Hourigan had done, and told him how Spence had hired Dixie Davis to find me and bring me to New Jersey. “His wife, she was afraid for their kid, but since then, she's been . . . Well, I don't know, she's been strange, I guess.”

Lansky smiled unhappily. “Yeah, women are like that. I know. All too well I know. So tell me, what are you going to do?” There was a glass of scotch with melting ice on the table in front of him. He hadn't drunk more than a sip, but then that was Lansky for you.

“First, I'm going to the Drum to make sure it's the same cop. If he is, I'm going to take care of him.”

Lansky said, “He's a cop. You know you can't kill him.”

“Of course not. But I can't let the guy bust up my place. If it had been a real pinch, I'd understand. Everybody knows that happens, but this, I don't know what it was, so after I beat the hell out of him, I'll ask.”

“Are you sure you didn't miss a payment?”

“He's not on my list. He's just a customer from the Bronx. He was in with some other cops one night. I probably gave them a round on the house.”

Lansky nodded. “Has he done the same thing anywhere else?”

“Not that I know of. If he had, Dixie would've heard. But that don't change the fact that he tore up my place pretty good and we had to close for a night. It just ain't right, what he did. He cost me money.”

Again, Lansky nodded. That's the way these things were handled. You couldn't kill a cop but you couldn't let 'em get away with crap like that, either.

He lit another cigarette and said, “No, it ain't right. I think you should go ahead, but don't let it get out of hand.”

“Maybe it's not the same guy. I won't know 'til I see him. I'll let you know what happens, one way or the other.”

“OK.”

“I don't know if you're planning on me making any deliveries this week, but it looks like I'll be out at Spence's place in New Jersey for a while.”

“Don't worry about it. The Coon can handle it. Call me when you're back in town.” The Coon, as he was called, was Joe Cooney, an Irish mug who made his deliveries in repairman's coveralls and carried his payoffs in a toolbox.

I pointed to Lansky's suitcases. “Where you been?”

“California.”

“More doctors?”

“Yeah, more doctors but nothing new.” So that's what tied him up.

Meyer's son, Buddy, had been born crippled. He had cerebral palsy, and everybody knew that his wife, Anna, thought it was God's punishment for the kind of work Meyer did. I thought that was just nuts, but I could tell that sometimes Meyer half believed it himself. Hell, it was easy for me to think this was nuts. I'd never been married or had a kid, so I didn't say anything when guys talked about it.

“I've been to every doctor and clinic I can find, and none of them has anything hopeful to say. I can't explain it to her.” He'd never talked about his personal life, and he really wasn't that night either. He just needed to let off some steam.

“I don't understand women. You can't explain what you do. They wouldn't understand. They spend the money you earn, and I don't begrudge her that. But they don't understand. They say the money is causing all the trouble, and then they say they don't care about the money. But we know different. Everybody cares about money.”

“Anybody who says he doesn't is lying,” I said.

“Sure he is. But this Lindbergh business made me see things in a different light. Did you know he got married just a couple of weeks before I did? Well, he did, and his son was born six months after Buddy. For two years now I've been thinking that somehow we were the same, only he was the good guy and I was the bad. You know, for all the laws we've broken and the guys I've had to kill. There was me and Buddy on one side, and Lindbergh and his family on the other, living the charmed life. If that's really the case, God's got a funny way of handling things.”