The Red Storm (21 page)

“How's your injury?”

“It's fine. It hasn't got infected, but I ripped a few stitches out not too long ago.”

She handed me a cup too hot to drink. I set it on the table while Zella straddled my knee.

“You have been a tremendous help to me,” she said. “I am very grateful.” She leaned into me and rested her hands on my shoulders. “So what can I do to repay you?”

Tired of her teasing, I pushed her off me, stood up, and kicked the chair I had been sitting on back.

“I don't like being toyed with,” I said. “That might work with other suckers, but not me, understand? As for repaying me, I'll send you a bill.”

I walked out, nearly taking her front door with me as I left. On the drive to my flat, I knew there was no chance I'd be able to sleep, as irked as I was. I took a detour to the Saint-Pierre Boxing Gym.

I was pleased to see that the exercise room was still open. It was not uncommon for them to stay open past working hours for a boxer that needed to do some extra training before an upcoming bout.

I stripped off my jacket and shirt so that I was dressed only in my undershirt and trousers, and set to work on one of the heavy bags. My wound acted up, but I ignored it. I kept up hitting the bag with powerful punches until my arms went numb and I had to wrap around the suspended bag itself for support.

The spasms in my arm were intense enough that I could barely grip the steering wheel of my machine when I left, let alone the doorknob to my place. I stripped, showered, and went to sleep as soon as my head collided with the pillow.

 

CHAPTER 18

I pulled onto Pratt Drive the next morning. I knocked on the door and Aunt Betty opened it up about three inches.

“Zella is not here,” she said. “She left early to see about getting another singing job.”

“That's okay; it's you I want to talk to.”

She opened the door the rest of the way. “You saw, didn't you?”

I jerked a nod and followed her into the house. She took a seat in the living room and asked, “You got a cigarette?”

Her old marm act vanished. She substituted it with a slight hint of a Queens accent. I shook loose a cigarette from my deck and she reached for it.

“I wanted to get rid of that tattoo. I didn't even want it. It was Bill that made me get it,” she said, accepting my light.

“You are probably wondering what this is all about.”

“I just want to know why you are passing yourself off as your daughter's aunt, and why you went by your mother's name when you were with Storm.”

She puffed out a plume of smoke from her lungs. “I left home when I was sixteen to go to New York and be a dancer. My mother did not approve, but that didn't matter to me. I was very good. Got me an agent that helped me get work. Trouble was he didn't like my name, Betty. I think it was because his ex-wife was named Betty. So I threw some names out and I guess the first one off the top of my head was Frieda, my mother's name and my middle name. He liked it and so Frieda Rae was my performing name. It was also the name I went by when I met Bill.

“Bill was everything a young gal that didn't know any better could ever want. Ruggedly handsome, unpredictable, wild, the works. I fell hard for that boy. It was only after we were going steady that the beatings started and I got pregnant. I thought for sure I wasn't going to have it but once Bill found out I was expecting, he just hit me everywhere else but the stomach.

“When Zella was born, I knew I had to leave, if not for my own sake, for Zella's. I went back to my ma's place. She was not content with the whole situation. My ma was a very religious woman, and having a child out of wedlock was a sin as far as she saw it. That's not including that I was a dope fiend at that point. I never took the stuff until the beatings. Bill busted me up so bad my back hurt so much, I couldn't even get out of bed without taking something for it. I tried to clean up for Zella, but I couldn't get off the hop. I knew I was no good for her, so about a year in I left her with my mother. She raised Zella as her own child, while I was drifting town to town looking for my next kick. It was not until I got word that my mother was sick that I cleaned up and came here to see her. She introduced me to Zella as her aunt Betty. It wasn't much of a stretch, because I could pass as her aunt. All the stuff I was taking took a toll on my beauty.”

She extended one of her aged hands in front of her and looked at it with despondent eyes. “I was very beautiful once. I got it from my mother, who was beautiful as well.”

“Yes, you were a real peach,” I said.

She sighed. “When my mother died, I moved in with Zella, and that's how it's been.”

“Until you saw Storm in town,” I said.

She showed no emotion. “Yes. I was out shopping one afternoon and saw him harassing the owner of a stand I frequented. He was asking the man about me. I thought he was going to kill the poor man, but instead he kicked over one of the man's stands. I didn't know what to do. I kept hidden, and then followed him in my car. He didn't see me because he kept his head low as he was walking down the street, knocking people over that were in his way. When he got to a cabstand, I followed him to the place he was staying. I found out what room he was at, and I was going to confront him, tell him to leave, but I got afraid and left.”

“Shortly after that,” I said, “Zella must've called or told you I had visited her and told her I was in contact with Storm and left it up to her if she wanted to have a meeting with him.”

“I know Zella, she would've met him. I could not allow her to meet that monster,” she said.

“So you went back to his place,” I continued, “and left a note saying you were Zella and that you wanted to meet him in the park. While he was sitting on the bench waiting for your daughter, you came from behind and shot him.”

“I don't regret what I did,” she said. “I was not going to let that brute corrupt her. It is enough that she inherited some of his wickedness, it did not need to be extended by his influence. He would dominate her the same way he did with all the women that made the mistake of coming across his path.”

“I understand,” I said.

“I suppose you are going to pass this on to the police.”

“What would be the point? They wouldn't believe it coming from me. Even if they did, they'd put the kid gloves on you, being a frail woman and especially since Storm was a cop killer.”

“You are not as bad as I thought you were, if that means anything,” she said.

I shrugged. “It might. Do you still have the gun?”

“Yes,” she said. She left the room for a moment and came back with a .38 Special snubby, and handed it to me.

“I didn't even know how to use one until Storm taught me. Said was for my own protection. He said I should stick to the snub-nosed revolver so it wouldn't get stuck in my clothes if I had to pull it out in an emergency. Funny, if he never taught me that kind of stuff, he'd probably still be alive.”

I snapped the barrel open and saw that one of the six cylinders had been spent.

“You better let me keep this,” I said.

About to say something in protest, she changed her mind and simply nodded.

I stuffed the gun into my pocket and asked, “Why haven't you told Zella yet who you really are?”

“Who am I? Her mother? Just because I may have given birth to her does not make me her mother. It was my own mother that raised her when I could not. She has turned out to be for the most part a very lovely young lady and that was my mother's doing. I was just a bad egg. I do not have the right to call myself Zella's mother. I won't take that away from the real woman that mothered her. The only thing I can say I'm proud of is keeping her away from Bill.”

I had gained a new respect for Aunt Betty. I left the house and tossed the gun she used to end Bill Storm's life of terror into the canal. She had her predicaments, but her maternal instincts for what was best for her child had to be respected.

*   *   *

I emptied the remainder of the afternoon attempting to unwind in my flat. I played an assortment of records and sat out on the gallery, smoking heavily. The phone had rung at numerous times, but I ignored it, until its metallic drumming grew tiresome. Irritated, I was about to pull the line out of the jack when I chose to just answer it instead.

“Someone wants to see you this evening,” an unemotional voice said over the line.

“I'm not in the mood to meet with anyone this evening. Tomorrow would be better.”

“He will be dead by tomorrow.”

“Tonight will be fine then,” I said.

I took the directions of where to meet the person down and at seven that evening I stood at the Toulouse Street wharf. An escort waited for me and I followed him up the gangplank onto a three-deck stern-wheeler. The escort made me wait above deck until the rotating paddle blades tore into the sepia-colored Mississippi and propelled the floating boat away from shore. I then was taken below deck, where my escort knocked on one of the cabin doors.

The door opened and an aged man with wire-brush whiskers and carrying a brown leather doctor's bag stepped out.

“I'm pleased you could make it,” he said. “I am Dr. Langley. I spoke to you on the phone. You may speak to the patient for a short while. I have not given him any sedatives for some time so he may speak to you of sound mind. The patient has suffered a grave injury and now infection has set in, and it is my prognosis that he will not make it past this evening. When the pain gets to be too great, I will come in and the meeting will be adjourned so that I may sedate him. Do we have an understanding?”

I said we did. The doctor pulled a cigar wrapped in cellophane out of his pocket and followed my escort above deck while I went into the cabin.

The tainted smell that occurs when death is imminent inundated the room. The cabin was vacant except for a bed where only the head of a man, propped up on pillows, was exposed.

The man's flaxen hair was cropped short. His features were sharp, as if chiseled from stone. I had never seen the face before, but in some way I had. The comic section of the day's paper was resting below his chest.

“You look a little uneasy there,” he said in a hoarse voice. “What's the matter with you? Never seen a dead man before?”

“You're not dead yet, Ranalli. Though I had been told otherwise,” I said.

“I wouldn't be too disappointed. I'm finished. That cop was a damn good shot. Doc is a bit stumped on how I've managed to last this long.”

“Maybe such things as death don't apply to you,” I said. “Like Rasputin. He too had a knack for not dying.”

“I ain't like him,” he said. “All them theatrics was Mallon's doin'. That kid should've been in show business or a circus. He'd fit right in with the bearded lady and the elephant man.”

“Seems like you two made a good team, and I'm interested in knowing how it all transpired,” I said.

Ranalli tried to force a grin. “I thought you would be. Why I had you come.”

Through the course of an hour Ranalli told me his tale, in sporadic pieces, resting when the pain was too significant. I had to put the rest together myself when on the brink of the end, the doctor came in and doped Ranalli up.

It went something like this:

After the racketeering indictment and being pressured into going stoolie, Ranalli was left in bad shape. He could not even fence goods without the hammer and saws breathing down him. Mallon had been trying to persuade him to bring the numbers game to the city, but in his predicament, it was impossible. That's when they came up with the scheme.

Mallon was having his own troubles at the time. A rival syndicate run by Jack Stein was moving in on his territory. Mallon had a meeting with Stein, and convinced him that if they combined forces and took Ranalli on, New Orleans would be the prime area for running numbers. Since there was no competition at the time, it was up for the taking, and they would split the take.

Stein was more than eager to go along with Mallon's proposal, and sent his best men out to aid Mallon. When Mallon bombed the New Orleans Hotel, Ranalli and his mugs were not even in the building. They had been tipped off by Mallon, and the bodies the police recovered were men that had been already killed by Ranalli a few hours before.

Ranalli's counterattack on Mallon was staged. Mallon and his men left the building long before the truck full of explosives arrived. Mallon had left six of Stein's men to watch the place, and when the truck exploded, it was the end of them.

With minor police assistance, Ranalli got rid of the rest of Stein's men, who were hiding out in the city.

“It was like shooting fish in a barrel,” Ranalli said. “Mallon gave us their exact locations and rooms.”

It did not take long for Stein to get word of what happened, and he demanded immediate reimbursement. At that point, his demands fell on deaf ears. With his most prominent regiment dead, Stein was a deer caught in the headlights. Ranalli stated that it was definitely Stein that killed Mallon's right-hand man, Devland, and that the move was reckless. Devland was well connected with several big Irish gangs. He was once a member of the White Hand gang before the Black Hand took over the Brooklyn waterfront.

Once Ranalli had made his staged attack, it was time to create his cover. “See, the only time I was ever printed was when I got busted doin' a hold-up job in Atlanta. I was only twenty, but see, the cop that processed me was a crooked bastard, and after shovin' enough jack his way he had the prints switched with the prints of a pal of mine. He wasn't planning on living long because he was a lunger, got it from the Spanish flu. But he was a tough bird, I'll give him that. He somehow managed to keep living. But he was damn near dead when I found him in the medical ward. He begged me to kill him, so what kind of pal would I be if I didn't do as he asked?”