“He better not,” Stevenson cracked. She began adjusting her copper disks.
“If we could get back to business.” He did have a copy of Weird Tales somewhere in his apartment, but no sense bringing that up.
They were in Stevenson’s workshop, a converted back room of her music shop. The three stood before a workbench where she had modified some of Henson’s other gear, and there were a few prototypes of her own making as well.
“What’s this?” Coleman said, pointing at two capsule-shaped canisters joined in the middle by a short tube. All over it was silver, and the canisters were about the length of a comb.
Stevenson smiled, picking the device up. ‘It’s meant to disorient your foe. I figured that might come in handy, considering.” She explained what the gizmo did.
Henson and Coleman exchanged a knowing nod.
They went over more of the equipment while Stevenson finished her tinkering. Afterward Henson tucked the devices away in two padded leather gym bags.
“Seven o’clock, don’t be late,” Henson said to Stevenson and Coleman.
“Wouldn’t think of it,” the flyer said.
Stevenson locked up her store, and the three left the building by the back stairs. He gunned the motorcycle to life and waved at the two women who got into a Ford.
Given he knew at least the two government men were bird-dogging him, Henson had taken precautions arriving here, doubling back at times, taking narrow passageways and so on.
Later, as the sun set, the three began converging on their target, the Granady Truck Repair & Parts company in the Bronx. The place was on Kingsbridge Road a few blocks from where it ended at Fordham. This was the address on the note he’d found in Davis’ desk. Once he’d confirmed from Slip Latimore the business was a front controlled by Dutch Schultz, he was pretty certain this was where Ellsmere was being held. Near the garage he met the newsboy, Henry. This was far outside the young man’s regular route, but he’d paid him to recruit a few of his fellow newsies from around here to keep an eye on the garage. They told Henry what they’d seen, and now he told Henson.
“There’s the usual mechanics closing up in there,” Henry Davenport him. “My pals figure no more than three of ‘em in there this time of the afternoon, Mr. Matt.”
He handed the young man a five. “Anything else I should know?”
The kid smiled at the money before tucking it away. “Yeah, there’s two other mugs of the gat variety who hang around. Sometimes different guys, but always two of ‘em.”
“Now you’re talkin’.” He handed over another dollar and the kid went on, the bulldog edition of his papers under an arm. The frontpage story was about several underworld types associated with the Dutch Schultz gang shot dead in a grocery store in the Bronx. A hidden room was discovered, empty, but it was surmised recently occupied. Bullet patterns indicated handguns and a shotgun were used.
Henson, his gunny sack over his shoulder like a delivery man, and walked past an Italian delicatessen. Inside, through the open doorway, he saw an older woman conversing in Italian with the counterman who was wrapping up a length of hard salami. Rounding a corner, there was an empty milk wagon at the curb. A horse was not hitched to it, but there was a barn across the way and the smell of the animals was strong. Further along in a luggage shops’ alcove, he met up with his compatriots. The shop owner frowned at the site of three negroes congregating in front of his window, not sure of what to make of two women wearing pants and leather coats. They walked back toward the parked milk wagon least they rouse the man further.
He told them what he’d learned. “I figure, we wait till the mechanics leave, then proceed with the plan.”
“Sounds right,” Bessie agreed.
Stevenson was at the corner, looking down the street at the garage. She had a dual clasp messenger bag in hand and strapped it around her torso as she walked back to the others. Looking around conspiratorially, she reached into the bag and handed Henson the modified throwing stars.
“I think these are more stable, less likely to go off prematurely.”
“A perfectionist, huh?”
She flashed a wry look at him.
Coleman said, “A couple of the mechanics are just leaving.”
“Okay, I’m going to get in position,” Henson said.
Going back onto the main thoroughfare, twilight fell, the grey light much like the in between of the Arctic. A transitory state in which anything could happen. Now, three men stood outside, with one in a newsboy cap laughed at a clever remark from one of the others. Henson crossed the street before reaching them. Black folks weren’t unknown in the Bronx, but they weren’t plentiful, and he didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention.
As if to taunt him, a street lamp came on as he passed underneath. Its bright white light illuminated his form sharply. But the men across the street weren’t paying him any attention. One of them padlocked a chain securing the front bay doors, and the three departed, two of them walking off in the same direction, and the third the opposite. Henson lingered along the sidewalk, and when the mechanics were no longer in sight, double-backed to the facility. As he’d rode toward the garage, he’d reconnoitered the area. He walked through an overgrown lot of grass and weeds on the same block as the garage. Straight ahead, he came to the end of the lot at the wall of a two-story building. He knew from his scouting, there was a space behind the most immediate building bordering the lot to his right and a wooden fence.
