The Red Storm (12 page)

“You must be Valentino,” I said.

The comment caused the man to stare at me for a few lingering moments before standing straight up, sending the blonde to the hardwood floor. “I don't like being called that. People think it's real funny when I look like this,” he said.

“Sorry, it was the only name I had for you,” I said.

He ignored me, and took his attention to the blonde, who was still on the floor. “Get up off the ground, woman. You must excuse Ida. She's a good woman, just not housebroken.”

When Ida had gotten up off the floor, he said, “Go powder your nose, we're going to have us some man talk here.”

She gave the burnt man a nasty look and stepped out.

“You treat your ladies well,” I said.

“Better than most,” he said. “I suppose you don't recognize me. Can't say I blame you, considering the circumstance.”

“I don't recall ever running into you before,” I said.

“Perhaps if you saw me as a fresh-faced twelve-year-old boy, it might paint a better picture.”

I gave the man's disfigured face a harder look. “It does. You're that Mallon kid.”

“I'm quite sure you saved my life that day when you let me go,” he said. “There is no doubt that Storm, a name I've never forgotten, would've killed me when he found out my folks weren't going to pay up.”

A moment of surrealness came over me as I looked at the little kid with the chubby cheeks, his facial features burned to the point he hardly looked human. The last time I saw the kid there was something not right about him and it still hadn't changed. His behavior didn't seem natural. “What happened to you?” I asked.

“You should've asked your friend Storm.”

“He did that to you?”

“Are you surprised? When I was barely in my twenties, he found me in New York. He blamed me for rattin' him out to the cops and making him a fugitive. He took a blowtorch to my face and left me for dead.”

“And that's when you patched yourself up and started a new life of crime, right?”

“Crime was nothing new to me,” he said. “It's been part of my entire life. Where'd you think my folks got their roll from? Bootlegging at first and then they moved into other areas. After they died, I took over the operation.”

“Should have stuck to your numbers, kid. You're out of your climate here. Johnnie Ranalli has got a lot of weight and the law has his back, especially after your hoods killed one of their own.”

“Ranalli took my money and failed to fulfill his commitment. When I find out where he is, we're going to come to an understanding.”

“Storm is dead, leave it at that,” I said. “There is no profit with this hard-on you have with killing his daughter and locking horns with Ranalli.”

“Not everything is about profit.”

“That's what losers say,” I said. “But you go right ahead and keep playing with fire. You'll see soon enough it won't just be your face that gets burned this time around.”

I was to the door when he said, “I'm grateful for what you did for me. That is why I'm allowing you to walk out that door. But if you want to know what happens to people that talk to me the way you just did, then perhaps you heard of what happened to Roman Perez.”

Roman Perez was a nobody blackmailer whose bloated body was recovered in a section of the old Erie Canal in New York.

The incident become big news because his sister Delphine was a popular socialite that hobnobbed with the elite, including newspaper editors, and brought a wave of attention to it and to the lack of results in finding the perpetrators.

“What'd Perez do to get that kind of treatment?” I asked.

“He made the mistake of trying to blackmail me,” Mallon said.

“Must've had something big for you to do that to him,” I said.

Mallon sat back down in his throne. “I guess you'll never know,” was all he said.

*   *   *

The morning scarehead read, “THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS!” The papers reported that the “battle” kicked off around two forty-five in the morning with a truck pulling up in front of the Mallon kid's stronghold. The few witnesses nearby told different accounts, ranging from it being a standard truck to a commercial one, and that either the driver didn't jump out or did before it exploded, taking a large chunk of the building with it.

This was followed with a “no-holds-barred” attack on Mallon's men who were holed up in rooms around town. Their rooms were busted into and they were either shot or the room was firebombed with them still in it.

One of the men, identified as Anton Delmar, didn't want to go down so easy. He put a bullet in one intruder's head as soon as they shot the door down. Delmar's vitality was rewarded with a bullet from an M1918 BAR, shearing him in half. More than two hundred rounds were collected at the scene. Brawley told me later in the day that the boys that processed the scene said it was closer to a hundred, but the press had a habit of rounding their figures up to create more pandemonium.

Citizens and a police officer who didn't identify himself reported police involvement in the attack, but the police department spokesman denied any such participation.

Ranalli's Model B was discovered on the Metairie Road bridge that went over the Seventeenth Street Canal. Early commuters reported being blocked from traversing the bridge on both sides by a barricade of cars and heavily armed gunmen.

Ranalli's machine had been torn into by an onslaught of heavy artillery and firebombed. Though the paper didn't report who the attack was from, it was likely Mallon's men doing some good old-fashioned retaliation.

The car was still burning like a funeral pyre when police arrived, and a fire crew had to be assembled to put it out. A body was found behind the wheel. Officers on the scene were quoted as saying that the car and body had been set on fire with a mixture of gasoline and motor oil, common components for the homemade hand grenade.

By the time the morning extra hit the doorsteps at sun-up, it was over. It was just another day outside as the news chattered over the radio waves as if a second world war had occurred.

Notwithstanding the reporters' dire attempts to incite with their perfervid coverage, most desensitized and indifferent citizens went about their daily lives as if nothing occurred. Gangsters getting murdered seemed to them a fitting end to their kind. Mayor Robert Maestri seemed to mirror the public's sympathy when he was quoted as saying, “The men who were killed were worthless members of society. They were men without religion or scruples, and a product of a foreign-based epidemic of undesirables that's plagued American society for too long. They will not be missed.”

As the story progressed, details and accounts became clear. The fingers on the body in Ranalli's car were preserved enough due to fire-retardant driving gloves that an identification was made. The scorched remains were positively identified as Johnnie Ranalli. Mallon must have got word of the attack, allowing him and most of his men to escape before the building was bombed. Seven unidentified men were killed from the blast. Mallon's whereabouts at the present time were unknown.

That day, Zella stayed home. The weak sister club owner cancelled her performance and closed shop for the remainder of the day until he was sure the dust had settled. Zella said it was more like he was waiting to get his nerve back.

When I tried to call Brawley on the phone, I was told he was swamped at the station and couldn't free himself to speak. I'd have to go to him during his lunch break. Most blacks would never bother going to a police station under their own free will. It'd be the same as tossing a sacrificial lamb into a den full of starving jackals. But working with jackals was nothing new to me.

Because of all the brouhaha that had happened, everyone in the smoked-filled detective bureau ignored my presence as I entered the room.

Throughout the room, ugly, hairy, and overweight middle-aged men conferred with others and mauled stacks of paper on their disorganized desks. The desks were wedged up against each other so tight it left little walking space. Budget tightening caused the overpacking, forcing separate units to share the same work space.

The majority of them paid no attention to me; the few that did looked up from their desks to cast nasty looks. I smiled back at them.

Brawley had situated himself at the back of the room. His desk, unlike the others, was well organized and free of clutter. When I got to him, he'd been looking over a court summons while chewing on a stuffed bologna sandwich.

It took me the time to find a chair and sit down in front of the desk before he looked up. There was a bruise above his left eye.

“What the hell did she throw at you this time?” I said.

“A rolling pin. Her aim's getting better, and I'm really starting to worry about her safety.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he said, “if she keeps up with this shit, I'm gonna snap on her, and it ain't gonna be pretty.”

“Maybe it's time to think about cutting your losses before it gets to that. No dame is worth losing your job and going to jail, you know.”

“I suppose that'd be the civil thing to do, right?” he said, raking his hands through his unruly hair. “What'd you want to talk to me about anyway?”

“I wanted to see if you got the time to find out what you can about Sal Mallon. That's Valentino's real name.”

“Why's that name sound familiar?”

I said, “Mallon was the kid Bill Storm kidnapped. You must've seen it in the papers.”

“That's just lovely. I'm supposed to be busting whores and going after junkies, and now you want me to stick my nose in this.”

“This tip might make you look nice and pretty to your superiors. That ain't so bad, is it?”

“No, it ain't,” he said. “But they're startin' to get a real good idea where this information is coming from. I shouldn't have had you come here.”

It would not look good for Brawley if the department started to see him as someone's puppet, especially when that someone happens to be a colored detective.

“Aw, don't worry about it,” I said. “They all think I'm too dumb to actually be behind this kind of dope. If they go asking what I was doing here, tell them you brought me in for disorderly conduct.”

Brawley snorted. “That'll fly real well.”

There was snickering in the background. I bowed around and saw that we had attracted a small audience.

“Best get on out of here before you draw any more attention,” Brawley said.

I went to leave, and found a couple of beefy men blocking my passage. They shifted to the side to allow me through, but not before one of them attempted to flip my hat off. I moved my head to the side, and made him miss by a wide margin. He didn't like that, and made out like he was going to charge me before the other man grabbed onto him.

“No sense in gettin' all worked up over a nigger,” he told him.

The other man grunted and muttered something that was barely English, but I didn't stick around to try to translate.

*   *   *

By evening Zella stated she was hungry enough to eat a horse, so I told her I'd take her to a Cajun place that served stuff that was pretty close to a horse.

“I like your car,” Zella said on the drive out. “But it doesn't seem to fit a sport like you. I could see you in a fancy roadster.”

“I had one of them once. A boat tail speedster, but that was when I was making real money. Besides, me being in one of them machines would bring too much unwanted attention.”

“I could see that.”

We got to the restaurant, which was more like a kitchen inside a wooden shack on the outskirts of the Honey Island swamp. The outside tables were full of colored folks, while on the porch a small band played Cajun music with a fiddle, a banjo, and a mandolin.

We took a seat at one of the few empty tables and ordered sirloin steak peppered in various spices. Our food came to us fast, and Zella wasted no time cutting into it. I watched her with amusement.

“What?” she asked, seeing me looking at her. “I suppose I ain't being very ladylike.”

She sat up straight in her chair, and tucked her elbows and forearms in. “That more to your liking?”

“Hey, it ain't bothering me. Just never seen a woman eat like that before.”

“Well, now you have,” she said, and continued cutting into her steak. We listened to the music for the rest of the meal before I asked, “What's the story with your aunt?”

“They ain't much of a story with her. I don't know that much about her. Kinda funny, but I didn't even know I had an aunt until she came to help take care of momma shortly before she died.”

“Isn't that a bit odd that your ma never told you about her?”

“You didn't know my mother,” she said. “The only things she talked about were the Bible and church. It was maddening when I got older. Everything I did was obscene or vulgar to her. I finally gave up trying to please her, and deliberately started wearing racy clothes and makeup just to spite her. I think that might've helped put her in the grave.”

“Was that your intention?”

“Of course not,” she said. “But I wasn't really sad neither when she went. We were different people, my mom and me. She was of the Old World way of thinking, and me … well, I suppose you could call it more modern.”

She was about to elaborate on that when a big hairy-chested man buzzed our table and asked Zella for a dance.

Annoyed, Zella said, “Can't you see I'm in the middle of a conversation here?”

“Who're you havin' a conversation with?”

I got up. “She's havin' it with me, so get lost.”

The hairy-chested man started throwing. I ducked and blocked everything he sent at me, then feinted, which caused him to move back, throwing him off balance. As he tried to regain his footing, I threw a straight jab to the chest. It knocked the wind out of him and he fell over.