heavy cologne made Scalise a little sick.
But Scalise knew Freddy was a good boy, one of the best of the colored crew, maybe the best of those who didn't get caught up in Ness's numbers net.
'Careful, now, Fred,' Scalise said, ushering him out. 'There's gonna be plenty of cops around. Could be plainclothes. Dress down.. look like somebody who might live in the projects.'
'They dress good over there, Mr. Scalise. You got to pass certain requirements to get in there.'
Scalise snorted a laugh. 'I thought 'poor' and 'colored' was all it took.'
'No. You can't get in if you got a record. I oughta know: I tried. Those are nice flats.'
'Better than this shithole I'm stuck in,' Scalise said, with a smirk, and patted the Negro on the back, sending him on his way.
That had been this morning. At two in the afternoon he got a call from Freddy, who had the info.
'He's in the center building,' Freddy said quickly. 'That X-shaped building.'
Just as Scalise had figured.
'That part was easy,' Freddy went on. 'I just asked around-cost me a double-sawbuck, is all. But I also finagled you the apartment number.'
'Beautiful, kid! Give.'
'Johnny's on the top floor. It's five stories, and he's in 514. Nobody up on top but witnesses and probably some cops standing guard. There's no cops on the grounds, that I could see, anyway.'
'Makes sense,' Ange said. 'They don't wanna advertise-but there's cops there, all right.'
'Up on the fifth floor there's got to be. I had a hell of a time gettin' this. I don't think nobody livin' at Outhwaite has got this info.'
'How the hell did you manage it, boy?'
'There's some white workmen, finishin' up that building. Painters and carpenters. Good union guys who don't like cops.'
'That's nice work, Freddy. You didn't leave a trail, did you?'
'Naw. I said I had a hundred bucks from a reporter to find out where Johnny C. was being kept. Said I'd split it with anybody interested.'
'You did good, boy. Made out like a bandit, on that grand I gave you. I'm gonna leave your fifteen hundred in a paper bag at the bar with Louie. Pick up it after closing-they don't serve coloreds here.'
There was a slight pause, then: 'Fine, boss.'
Ange had next phoned Harry Keenan at the hotel in Warrensville Heights.
'Go buy an old used delivery truck,' he told Keenan. 'Pay cash and use a phony name. Make sure it runs good, though. Then get a couple of them tin tool kits-big enough to stuff our heaters in. And find some second-hand shop where you can buy coveralls and work clothes, loose-fitting so we can wear regular street clothes under.'
'We?'
'Yeah. I'm coming along. I wouldn't miss this for the fuckin' world.'
Ange had been cooped up in his cement cell too long-just two days, really, but it seemed forever-and besides, he wanted the word to go out that he did this deed himself. Angelo Scalise himself put the bullets in that squealing nigger Washington.
That would earn him respect. Like his cousin Sal professed, but didn't live up to, respect was all-important in a business like this. The whole east side-the whole damn town-would know you don't fuck with Angelo Scalise, the big boss of the Mayfield Road gang.
He let the Keenans and Greene and Berns in the back, up the fire escape, and they all changed clothes in his little closet of a room. Harry Keenan, a big guy who looked like a melancholy bear, said he had silencers for the guns.
'No silencers,' Ange said, placing a. 45 automatic and a. 38 revolver, both Colts, in a steel-gray tool kit that contained nothing else except two boxes of ammunition and some towels stuffed in to keep the guns from rattling around. 'I want the world to hear this.'
'This place could be crawling with cops,' Greene said. Both he and his partner Berns were burly, with lumpy anonymous faces. Sam Keenan rarely said a word; he was a skinny pale killer with a pointy chin and nose, and seemed always to follow his brother's lead.
'There's gonna be cops,' Ange admitted, 'but it won't be crawlin' with 'em. They can't afford to, it'd give 'em away.'
'Killing cops ain't a brilliant idea,' Berns said. 'Remember the shit storm after the Kansas City massacre?'
Ange waved that off. 'That was feds, and besides, we're just gonna kill a nigger. We won't kill any cops unless they get in the way. Shoot 'em in the kneecaps, why don't you? If you're squeamish.'
Harry Keenan planted himself in the middle of the small cement room and spread his hands like an umpire. With five men in there, it was as crowded as the stateroom scene in that Marx Brothers movie. And Ange didn't like being crowded.
'We need big dough for this,' Keenan said. 'We never bargained for going head-on with cops. You want us to risk puttin' our faces in every post office in the country with state, feds, and locals aiming to put our asses in the hot squat, you'd better up the fuckin' ante, Ange.'
'You want me to up the fuckin' ante? I'll up your fuckin' ante.' Angelo felt the red rising into his face. 'You can fucking retire when this is over. A hundred grand apiece. Is that the fuck enough for you bozos?'
The men glanced at each other with eyes wide with dollar signs and, slowly, began to nod. One hundred thousand depression dollars would buy these men a new life. And these aging remnants of the once-proud Purple Gang could use an opportunity like that, to hell with the risks.
'Agreed,' Harry said, for all of them.
The Outhwaite housing project was bordered on the north by Quincy and the south by Woodland. The five men were in a battered brown '34 Reo panel truck, Harry and Angelo in the front, the rest riding in back. All wore work clothes- coveralls and caps.
'Anybody asks,' Ange had told them all, 'we're plumbers. But let me do the talkin'.'
A second car, a four-door Plymouth, was parked on a side street off Quincy, a few blocks away, so on the getaway they could dump the panel truck with the work clothes inside. Right now, just after four o'clock, they pulled into the access road that took them between two large red-and-orange brick buildings and into the large grassy courtyard of the projects. Outhwaite was like a fortress, a rectangle of land between 40th and 55th with rows of modern brick apartment buildings on each side; in the center was the nearly finished X-shaped building where Washington was sequestered.
The afternoon was cool and overcast, but not cold; colored kids of grade-school age with light jackets or no jackets were running around the big grassy area, playing kick the can, screaming gleefully. Several trucks of various sizes, apparently belonging to the handful of white workmen who were milling about, were parked on the grass near the X-shaped building. Up on the roof were more white laborers, working with tar; the smell of it was in the air.
Angelo and his four cohorts got out of the panel truck slowly, casually, talking amongst themselves-the topic of conversation being whether that Iowa kid Bob Feller could pitch the Indians into the next World Series.
A young-looking fair-haired workman loading a ladder into the back of a truck said, 'Hiya,'' and then, 'Little late in the day to be comin' to work, ain't it, fellas?'
'You know how it is in the plumbing business,' Ange said, shrugging, fist tightening around the handle of the tin tool box he was lugging. 'Trouble with those new fixtures already.'
'No rest for the wicked,' the workman said with a grin, and went back about his own business.
The double doors to the main lobby were in the middle of the X on the Woodland Avenue side. The lobby was unfinished cement, ceiling and floor, and empty. Angelo tried the elevator, but it wasn't working yet. They found a stairwell and walked up, flight after flight, without a word.
At the landing of the fifth floor, Angelo paused and peeked out the hallway door.
Not a soul in sight.
Like the lobby, the walls were concrete and so was the floor, no carpet or tile laid yet. The light fixtures had not been put in, though bulbs and wiring were in place. The place smelled new: The scents of fresh cement, of glue, of metal, mingled. There were, however, numbers on the varnished wood doors.
