Shamrock Alley (57 page)

“I took time off. I don’t need anymore. Anyway, I’ve got that meeting with Sullivan today.”

Following Jimmy Kahn’s arrest, the Secret Service had gone after as many of Kahn and Mickey’s cohorts as they could round up. In most instances, no one said a word and there was no incriminating evidence against them to force them to talk. In other instances, there
was
evidence: Glenn Hanratty, known to most of the lowlifes in Hell’s Kitchen as “Irish,” was arrested based on fingerprints he’d left on the silencer boxes John had bought from Mickey. Following his arrest, Biddleman wasted no time issuing a warrant for Calliope Candy. When the back room was tossed, agents uncovered several more silencers, as well as the equipment used to make them. Also, packed inside a crate of Tootsie Pops was a large collection of handguns. NYPD was still checking ballistics, and probably would continue to do so for some time.

Sean Sullivan, the cutter who’d been paired up with John for the hit on Ricky Laughlin, was the only person they’d gotten a hold of who was half willing to cooperate. Sean was young and impressionable, and John actually felt there was a good chance the kid would go to the witness stand to testify.

“Horace Green,” Kersh said.

John looked up from his desk, rubbing his hands together. He couldn’t shake the numbness from them. A souvenir from his time on the frozen streets of Hell’s Kitchen. “What?”

“Remember I said I recognized that name?” Kersh said. He tapped a finger against one of the printouts on his desk. “Telephone records from Charlie Lowenstein’s house in Queens. Lowenstein’s wife had made a few calls to a Horace Green. I’m going to pay her a visit this afternoon.” Kersh frowned. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“What about Katie?”

“She’s doing all right,” he said, uncertain whether that was even the truth.

Kersh’s gaze lingered. “You let me know,” he said after a moment, “if there’s anything I can do.”

John just nodded and turned away.

Clouds had appeared, and it started to snow lightly by midafternoon.

“You want something to drink?” he asked Sean Sullivan, sitting across from him at a diner booth in lower Manhattan. “Some coffee?”

Sean shook his head. The kid hadn’t been sleeping properly, and the skin around his eyes was the color of rotten gums. He’d shown up just five minutes before, wrapped in a stiff ski jacket zipped to his chin. When he took it off, John could make out fresh bandages along Sean’s arms through the sheer fabric of his shirt. He was cutting again.

“I want you to understand how important your testimony is, Sean,” he continued. “Between you and me—we say the right things, Jimmy goes away for a very long time. And that means you don’t have nothing to worry about.”

“Yeah,” Sean muttered, but he wasn’t in genuine agreement. He had not yet agreed to testify at Jimmy Kahn’s trial. However, John was confident the kid would do it if pushed in the right direction. Sean Sullivan just needed someone to hold his hand. Not to mention the Secret Service had a case against him, too. His refusal to testify would wind him up in prison.

“What we’re gonna do,” he said, “is get you out of the city when the trial starts, put you in a nice hotel room somewhere. We’ll have an agent with you the whole time.”

“This like that witness protection thing?”

“Kind of.”

On the tabletop, Sean’s hands shook. “Where’s Jimmy now?” the kid asked.

“Jail,” he said.

“I mean, like,” Sean stammered, “he ain’t gonna make bail or nothin’?”

“Not a chance, Sean.”

Sean chewed at his lower lip. His eyes bounced nervously between John and the sticky tabletop. He cracked his knuckles, tapped one knee against the bottom of the table. “You think I can get one of those agents now? Like, to watch my apartment?”

With Mickey O’Shay dead and Jimmy Kahn behind bars, he could really see no reason. But to allay the kid’s fears he said yes, that it could be done.

“And Jimmy—he won’t know I’m doin’ this,
if
I’m doin’ this?”

“Not until the trial,” he promised him.

He chewed his lower lip some more. Something in his eyes reminded John of Tressa Walker, and how frightened she’d been that night at McGinty’s when she’d first started talking to him about Mickey O’Shay and Jimmy Kahn.

Then, after what seemed like a lifetime, Sean Sullivan said, “Okay. Yeah, I’ll do it. I’ll testify.”

Since Mickey’s death and Jimmy’s arrest, Roger Biddleman was slowly becoming a prominent fixture around the New York field office. He walked the halls strapped in dark suits tight enough to work the creases out of his elbows, and moved with a lively expeditiousness that seemed more fitting for a runway model. Immediately after the case had broken, he’d commended John with a handshake and a pat on the back, saying the words prosecutors always said when they knew their number had come in—words that made them sound more like insightful modern art dealers than lawyers. He’d been a bit discontented that Mickey O’Shay had been killed, but he was not one to grieve over a loss. Instead, he focused on the path ahead. And as the days came and went, John was pleased to find that Roger Biddleman’s interest in him, now that his work had been all but completed, was rapidly diminishing.

An interesting tidbit of information came from Bill Kersh’s meeting with Ruby Lowenstein, Charlie Lowenstein’s wife. Skinny and distressed, she had not taken long to admit to Kersh how strapped for cash she’d been ever since her husband had been locked away. Things had been too tight, she said, and she didn’t deserve to suffer because her lousy husband had been tossed in jail. Some time before she’d made it a point to visit Lowenstein in prison and pester him about her situation. Finally, tired of his wife’s badgering, he’d told her to contact a friend of his, a good Jewish guy from his old neighborhood, to pick up some old items of his and see what he could do. The items were the plates and negatives of the counterfeit hundreds. The good Jewish guy from his old neighborhood happened to be Horace Green.

So the connection was made: Green had taken the plates and negatives to try and sell as a favor to an old friend … but before he could, he ran into a little roadblock. The roadblock was two young Irish guys from Hell’s Kitchen who would wind up hacking Green to pieces and stealing the plates and negatives.

As he was with everything, the ever-present Roger Biddleman was quick to tune in to Kersh’s newfound information. He jotted notes and made phone calls and smiled wider and wider at the agents with each passing day. Along the way, he adopted the annoying habit of tapping a Bic pen against any available surface of the field office at any given time. He also started skipping lunch and, after just two weeks, trimmed down considerably.

For Roger Biddleman, life had never been better.

To appease Sean Sullivan, the Secret Service agreed to put him up in a hotel room in Jersey until after the trial. Three times a day, agents would check in on him in alternating rotations. One gray, overcast Tuesday, Dennis Glumly arrived with Tommy Veccio at the hotel, hoping to get some more information from Sullivan about any other homicides he’d gotten wind of. Outside the hotel room door, Veccio knocked twice and shouted for Sullivan. The kid didn’t answer.

“Maybe he’s out?” Glumly suggested.

“He’s supposed to stay here,” Veccio said. He knocked again and called Sullivan’s name. Still, no answer. He tried the knob. It was locked.

“Don’t you have a key?” Glumly asked.

“No … Sullivan has always opened the door.”

Both men exchanged a subtle look of discomfort. Several minutes later, an old Hindu woman shuffled down the corridor escorted by Dennis Glumly, and paused outside Sean Sullivan’s door. She produced a ball of keys from her apron just as Glumly and Veccio unholstered their weapons. The old Hindu woman unlocked Sean Sullivan’s hotel room door. It swung open, and she backed away.

Veccio stepped in first, followed by Glumly.

“Sean!” Glumly called. “Hey, Sullivan!” Scowling, turning to Veccio, who had crossed the room and was moving toward the closed bathroom door, he said, “If this goddamn kid split …”

Veccio pushed the bathroom door open. “Oh, for … Jesus Christ—”

Glumly hustled to Veccio’s side while the old Hindu woman poked her head into the room.

The bathroom was humid, the mirror over the sink fogged, the taste of copper in the air.

Sean Sullivan lay naked in the bathtub, soaking in a few inches of lukewarm water stained pink. His eyes were open and glazed over, staring blindly at the tiled shower wall opposite him. His left arm lay draped over the side of the tub, split open from his wrist to the crook of his elbow. A pool of blood collected on the floor beneath his dripping fingertips. His right arm lay against his chest, also cut, bleeding against his pale flesh and into the tub.

Caught in the nest of his pubic hair like a netted fish was a straight razor, its blade shiny with blood.

T
HE NEWS CAME JUST BEFORE THE WEEKEND
.

Roger Biddleman, standing before a glowing landscape of lower Manhattan, turned from the window as John and Kersh entered the office and smiled. He immediately went to both men and pumped their hands in a firm shake before slipping behind his desk and beckoning his guests to sit as well. The entire office conveyed the faint aromas of cedar and pipe smoke. Stacks of computer printouts sandwiched inside manila folders leaned against the side of Biddleman’s desk.

“To begin with,” Biddleman said as John and Kersh took their seats, “I just want to say how much I appreciate and admire the work you’ve both done on this case. Especially you, John. Mickey O’Shay was a lunatic. I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like. It’s unfortunate it ended the way it did though; I would have liked to have him stand trial. But,” and his voice dropped an octave here, “the important thing is that you got him off the street.”

John sensed a rising disquiet on the horizon. “Well,” he said, “we have the Kahn trial.”

Pressing his lips together, Biddleman rubbed two stiff fingers across his forehead, leaving behind white streaks in his skin. “Jimmy Kahn’s not going to trial,” Biddleman said.

John’s eyes swung in Kersh’s direction, then back to Roger Biddleman. “What do you mean?”

Biddleman shifted uncomfortably behind his desk. All former amiability had been stricken from his face. “Kahn’s attorney cut a deal with our office.”

John felt like someone had just dropped a concrete block into his lap. “What are you talking about?”

In a toneless voice, Roger Biddleman said, “Kahn has been rising in the eyes of the Italians. He’s tied in to the Gisondi crew over in Brooklyn. We’re going to use Kahn to get to them.”

“Oh, I don’t believe this. You can’t be serious. You’re letting him walk?”

“No, not exactly,” Biddleman said. “He’ll plea to a conspiracy charge, do about a year or so. Then he gets to work for us. The time in prison will even enhance his reputation with the Italians.”

He stared at Biddleman in disbelief. He felt numb. It took all his effort to pry his eyes away and face Bill Kersh. “You agree with this?” And without waiting for an answer, he turned quickly back to the attorney. “Chominsky knows about this?”