“I never saw a pocket knife open that fast.”
“It only seemed fast,” said Branco. “You were young and afraid . . . So was I.”
16
A voice in the dark shocked Tommy McBean out of his sleep.
“What?”
“Listen.”
“Who the hell are you?” McBean reached for the gun under the pillow. It wasn’t there. That’s what he got for going to bed drunk in a strange hotel with a woman he never met before. She was gone like his gun. Big surprise. She had played him like a rube.
Boiling mad, ready to kill with his bare hands, if he could only see the guy, he sat up in bed and shouted, “What do you want?”
“We have cow horns.”
“Oh yeah?” Tommy shot back. “You have my dope? Who the hell are you going to sell it to?”
“We have buyer who pay-a top doll-a.”
The guy talked like an Eye-talian. Another damned guinea. More every day. “Who?”
“Top doll-a.”
“Who, damn you?”
“You.”
“Me? What are you talking about?”
“We no steal your heroin.”
“You just said you did.”
“We no steal it. We kidnap it.”
McBean swung his feet to the floor. Cold steel pressed to his forehead. He ignored it and made to stand up. Then he felt a needle prick between his ribs, and the voice in the dark said, “I’m-a four inches from inside your heart.”
McBean sagged back on the bed. “Ransom? You’re holding our dope for ransom?”
“You make-a distributor system. You sell it.”
“You ‘make-a’ war on us.”
The Italian surprised him, saying, “You win-a the war.”
“Better believe it.”
“Not how you think. You make-a Fordham College. You make-a Boston University. Me? Steamer Class for stupid dago.”
“What are you gassin’ about?”
“I have more hungry men than you. Micks move up. Dagos just start. Ten years, you all be college men. Ten years, we own the docks.”
“You’ll never own the docks.”
He laughed. “We make-a side bet. After you pay-a ransom.”
“What if I don’t?”
“We dump drugs in river.”
“Geez . . . O.K. How much?”
“Half value.”
“I gotta talk to my cousin.”
“Ed Hunt said no deal.”
“Ed already said no deal? Then no deal.”
“Hunt died.”
“Ed’s dead?”
“Do we have deal?”
Tommy McBean could not imagine Ed Hunt dead. It was like the river stopped. And now the Wallopers was all on him.
“What killed him?”
“It looked like a heart attack.”
Antonio Branco walked from the waterfront to Little Italy.
They would be bloody years, those ten or so years to take the New York docks. The Irish would not let the theft of their drugs and the killing of Hunt go by without striking back. Chaos loomed and pandemonium would reign.
At Prince Street, he went into Ghiottone’s Café, as he often did. The saloon was going strong despite the hour. Ghiottone himself brought wine. “Welcome, Padrone Branco. Your health . . . May I sit with you a moment?”
Branco nodded at a chair.
Ghiottone sat, covered his mouth with a hairy hand, and muttered, “Interesting word is around.”
“What word?”
“They are shopping for a killer,” said Ghiottone.
“The grocer” can’t fool everyone. Especially a saloon keeper who works for Tammany Hall. Cold proof of the chaos that threatened every dream.
“Why do you tell me this?”
Ghiottone returned a benign smile. “A padrone recruits employees. Pick and shovel men. Stone masons. In your case, you even recruit padrones. Who knows what else?”
“I don’t know why you tell me this.” Did Ghiottone know how close he was walking to death?
“Are you familiar with the English word ‘hypothetical’?” Ghiottone asked.
“What ipotetico are you talking about?”
Ghiottone spread his hands, a signal he meant no harm. “May we discuss ipotetico?”
Branco gave a curt nod. Perhaps the saloon keeper did know he was close to death. Perhaps he wished he hadn’t started what couldn’t be stopped.
“The pay is enormous. Fifty thousand.”
“Fifty thousand?” Branco couldn’t believe his ears. “You could murder a regiment for fifty thousand.”
“Only one man.”
“Who?”
“They don’t tell me. Obviously, an important figure.”
“And well-guarded. Who is paying the fifty thousand?”
“Who knows?”
“Who is paying?” Branco asked again.
“Who cares?” asked Ghiottone. “It came to me from a man I trust.”
“What is his name?”
“You know I can’t tell you. I would never ask who brought the job to him. Just as he would never ask that man where it came from. In silence we are safe.”
What blinders men wore. “Kid Kelly” Ghiottone seemed unable to imagine that he was linked—like a caboose at the end of a speeding train—to a titan who could pay fifty thousand dollars for one death. Branco pictured in his mind jumping from the roof of that caboose to the freight car in front of it, and to the next car, and the next, running over the swaying tops, one to another to another, all the way to the locomotive.
“They came to you,” Branco mused. “Why do they come to an Italian?”
Ghiottone shrugged. Branco answered his own question. The conspirators wanted someone to take the blame, a killer who is completely different from the titan who wanted the victim dead. What better “fall guy” than a crazed Italian immigrant? Or an Italian anarchist.
“What do you say?” asked Ghiottone.
Branco sat silent a long time. He did not touch his glass. At last he said, “I will think.”
“I can’t wait long before I ask another.”
Antonio Branco fixed the saloon keeper with the full force of his deadly gaze. “I don’t believe you will ask another. You will wait while I think about the man you need.”
“Fifty thousand is a fortune,” Ghiottone persisted. “A third or a half as a finder’s fee would still be a fortune.”
Branco stood abruptly.
“What’s wrong?” asked Ghiottone.
“This is no place to discuss such business. Wait ten minutes. Come to the side entrance to my store. Make sure no one sees you.”
Branco made a show of thanking him for the wine and saying good night as he left the crowded saloon.
“Kid Kelly” Ghiottone waited
