Everybody Goes to Jimmy's (21 page)

The doors closed. I pushed
61
, and the car lurched down. When the doors opened, I was the first one out. I saw two guys were ducking out of sight behind corners. Yeah, my brilliant plan just kept getting more and more brilliant.

The offices were dark, and only a few of the hallway lights were turned on, so the open area in front of the elevators had a dim, shadowy look. You could catch a little reflected light off the shiny stainless steel eagles out on the balcony where Ellis and I had been. A hard wind thudded against the wide glass doors.

Pauley still had a tight grip on Anna, and the old woman with the baby stayed right at his side. The little girl had stopped crying by then and sucked her thumb. Frenchy and Malloy shifted the heavy crates they held and moved away from the others. Pauley Domo turned when he heard me walking toward them.

“That'll do, guys,” I said. “You can put them down there by the doors.”

Pauley's head looked like it was on a swivel as he tried to watch me and see what Frenchy and Malloy were doing. They dropped the crates and stepped back smartly. Malloy pulled his Luger but kept it at his side.

I got the Smith out of my pocket and cocked it. “Do you want me to shoot him?” I asked Anna as I aimed at his head.

She started to say something but stopped.

Pauley said, “I thought we had a deal. I'm serious about this.” He twisted around behind her, giving me no clear shot.

I said, “You've got two choices and you better make up your mind fast because we're going to have more company soon. You can let Anna go and take a crate and scram out of here on your own. Or you can keep dancing around here and either Malloy or I will shoot you. Malloy is the guy behind you with the Luger aimed at your spine. What's it going to be?”

He never had a chance to answer. I heard running footsteps from somewhere close, and Luther and three of his pals barreled around a corner behind Frenchy and Malloy. They knocked my guys to the ground and swarmed over Pauley and the women. Luther stopped and tried to pull the lid off one of the crates.

I took a slow breath and shot the closest thug in the center of the chest. For the second time that night, the sound of the gunshot made everyone freeze for a short moment. Everyone but me. I cocked the pistol and took aim at another Kraut who turned and ran before I could pull the trigger.

Then Luther was on me. He knocked me on my ass. Both the gun and my stick clattered away. I rolled as Luther tried to kick me in the ribs. I guess he was still so angry about his nose that he tried too hard. The toe of his shoe hurt like hell where it caught me, but it didn't hit square. He either hit a wet spot on the floor or the momentum of the kick pulled him around and his other foot slipped out from under him. I was on my feet before he was, and my knucks were still on my left hand. The big bandage in the middle of his ugly mug was much too tempting to resist. He howled even louder than before when I pasted him.

The bastard didn't stay down. I found the gun and my stick on the floor. By the time I'd collected them, he was getting to his feet. Pauley and Anna had disappeared. Frenchy and Malloy were mixing it up with Luther's guys. On my way past him, I clipped Luther across the ear with my stick. It barely slowed him down.

Frenchy was half as big as the Kraut who'd jumped him but was pounding the guy against the wall. Malloy was getting the worst of it, so I came up on his guy and caught him on the back of the neck with my knucks. Malloy pushed him away and he collapsed. I turned back to Luther. He was on his feet and reaching for his gun in a big shoulder holster.

Ellis came up behind to him and said, “Don't touch it. Hands behind your head.”

Luther did as Ellis said and then spun around and took a swing. He tagged Ellis on the chin. That really made him mad. He slugged Luther in the midsection, and the big shit went down to his knees again. Ellis got out the cuffs and ratcheted them on Luther's wrists none too gently behind his back.

I tried to find Anna and Pauley Domo. The old woman and the baby were still standing close to Frenchy and the crate he'd been carrying. The other box of money was gone. Somebody yelled something I couldn't understand. Through the glass doors, I saw figures moving out on the balcony.

When I got out there, I saw it was Pauley, Anna, and the boy. The crate was on its side near the doors. Waxy chunks had spilled out. The top had come off, and Pauley held it in front of him like a shield. The boy was going after him with a knife. Anna was trying to calm them down. The kid's blood was up, and he was having none of it. Pauley Domo had a queasy look. He backed away from the kid but kept an eye on the low barrier at the edge of the balcony. It was about two feet high, and I guess he could tell how easy it would be to go over. The gusting wind didn't help.

The kid held the knife low and level and kept it moving back and forth in a narrow arc. He feinted at Pauley Domo's legs, and the older guy backed away toward a corner where one of the eagles jutted out. They danced side to side, each giving a little ground, but the kid was more aggressive. He attacked with the blade. Pauley Domo retreated and then came back swinging the wooden lid. They didn't have much room to work with. The balcony was no more than ten feet deep.

Anna came up behind the kid and said, “Eddy, stop it, leave him alone, this is wrong.”

The kid paid no attention until she grabbed at his shoulder, and he shoved her away without looking.

Anna stumbled back toward me, hit the box, and stepped on one of the waxy clumps of bills. She staggered back toward the edge. It caught her just at the knee, and she went over onto the shiny back of an eagle gargoyle. The red silk slid across the smooth steel, and it made a muffled, hollow rattle. She twisted and before I knew it, her legs were dangling over nothing, and she got one hand onto the lip of the square cutout on the back of the thing. It was sixty-one floors down to the Lexington Avenue pavement.

Pauley saw her, but the kid didn't know what had happened and kept slashing. I got right up to the edge and knelt down to be level with her, but I couldn't reach her with an outstretched arm. I glanced down for a dizzying, terrifying, gut-churning second at the car lights on Lex so far below us. At first, she didn't even see me; she was concentrating so hard on her hands where they gripped the metal edge. The wind whipped at her dress. It tore at her shoulder, and I could see the muscles of her arms clenching. She pulled herself part of the way onto the flat top, but her hips slid back as she fought to keep her grip. I reversed my stick, yelled her name, and held the crook end out to her.

Her knee caught a narrow ledge that ran along the side of the eagle's neck, and she was able to raise herself up enough to let go with one hand and reach for the stick.

“Go ahead, I've got you,” I said. She got one hand around the crook and then the second. I pulled. Her knee slipped off the ledge, and I took all of her weight. For an awful moment that lasted forever, she slid back and almost pulled me over the edge. I was able to brace myself against the low wall, but I couldn't get the leverage to pull her in.

“Don't look down!” I yelled. “Look at me, look at me.”

I don't know how long we stared at each other, but my shoulders were screaming when Pauley Domo and the kid got their arms around me and pulled both of us back up.

Anna wound up on her stomach, flat on the back of the eagle. Then I was able to tug her across with the stick.

As we caught our breath, we were too spooked by what had happened to stand up while we were out there on that narrow, windy balcony, so we crawled back inside.

Jacob, Mercer Weeks, and everybody else from upstairs were waiting for us.

Chapter Nineteen

They didn't know what had just happened. The way the light inside reflected off the glass doors, it was hard to tell what was on the other side.

Ellis took Jacob and me and Mercer Weeks to one side and said we should move everything back upstairs. “Look, this place is going to be packed with police in a few minutes. You,” he said to Jacob, “are not going to be mentioned in any of the reports. If anybody asks, the Cloud Club is off-limits.” Jacob and Weeks left. Frenchy and Malloy took the crates to the elevator. Anna and everyone else followed them.

“Have you got a good story?” I asked when they were gone.

“I got a tip when I was at your place earlier tonight that a suspect in the warehouse shooting would be here.”

“You won't have to worry about pinning it on Luther,” I said. “Bring him over here.”

Ellis dragged Luther to his feet. I opened his coat and pulled the broom-handle Mauser out of his shoulder holster. I handed it to Ellis. “He killed Betcherman with this.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because it's a machine pistol. Has a fully automatic setting. You'll be able to match the bullets, and you're going to find that Betcherman was in this up to his eyebrows with Luther.”

“Yeah,” Ellis said. “He was in that Teutonia Society. We didn't have to dig very deep to get that.”

“OK, then, one of the Saengers from the Chicago chapter learned that some money had been sent to a Jimmy Quinn in New York. He came here with a bunch of brothers. Anna told me there were six of them. They've got funny names. One of them was called No-no. He was the explosives expert. Some of them made the mistake of getting in touch with Betcherman and Luther, who agreed to throw in with them. One guy blows himself up. Luther and Betcherman take care of the other one in the warehouse. Then Luther cuts Betcherman out of the picture.”

Ellis said, “We know there was one Saenger in your room at the Chelsea. One of the dead men might be a Saenger, too.”

“Right, the one who came in from the hall. The one who busted through the window was a Kraut.”

“Where does Klapprott fit in?” he asked.

“I'm not sure, but I think he's not really the big cheese he made himself out to be. Luther here didn't seem to pay him much mind.”

The big Kraut knew we were talking about him, but it was hard to tell how much he understood or what he was thinking with all that blood on his face.

“That leaves this one.” I nodded to the dead thug on the floor. “I shot him.”

Ellis said he was sure it was self-defense and told me again to go upstairs. As it turned out, the department did bang-up work on the rest of it. There were only a few short notices buried in the back pages about the swift arrest that was made in the case of the slain detective, and they made no mention of anything else. Luther was convicted and sent to Sing Sing, where somebody stabbed him.

As the elevator door opened, Ellis said, “That blonde, what's her name?”

“Anna.”

“Is she really married to that guy?”

I shrugged.

“But you and her …”

“Yeah.”

“She's something.”

“Ain't it the truth.”

In the Cloud Club, Frenchy had elected to lubricate the proceedings with a round of Martinis.

Jacob knocked his back but was still sounding pretty steamed at Anna. “What the hell do you mean she's my daughter?”

The old woman, the baby in question, and Pauley Domo were at a four-top near the back. I think he'd realized that the only chance he had of getting anything now was by laying low.

Anna was sitting in my chair. The kid was beside her. She ignored Jacob's question. She said, “These two boxes are what's left of the ransom ten months later. I know you're wondering why I packed it like this. Maybe it was a little crazy, but it worked. Cash attracts attention. A lot of cash attracts a lot of attention. I wanted it to look like something else, and I used what I had at hand.”

“I guess that makes sense. Anyway, it's here now. I'll take care of it.” Jacob was comfortable on a barstool, drink in hand, back against the bar. He grinned around the Havana.

“No.” Anna's voice stayed level. She wasn't mad. She wasn't arguing. “I did exactly what I said I'd do. I did what you and Mercer asked me to do. I delivered the money. Those guys killed Benny, then they killed each other. I didn't have anything to do with it.”

“I still don't understand what you're talking about. We all agree. This is
my money.
”

“Have you forgotten what you said that night? I think it was just about the last words you spoke before I drove away. You remember, I know you do, I can see it in your face.”

I could see it, too. Jacob took a drink, rattled his ice, messed with his cigar, and mumbled, “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Think about it. The last note said, ‘Send the Woman.' I knew it wasn't kosher. So did you, but you didn't have any other choice, so you made me a promise, ‘as an honorable man'—your words, Jacob. You said that if I did this thing for you, you would be in my debt and I could ask anything of you. Anything. Mercer was your witness.”

She turned to him, “Isn't that right, Mercer?”

It was his turn to bob and weave. “We said a lot of things that night. We had to get Benny back.”

She stood and stepped up to the bar. She got right in front of Jacob, her face level with his. I saw that she was barefoot. I guess her shoes were somewhere down on Lex. “That's right and I did my part. I took that money, and I tried to get Benny back, and I was locked up for ten months, ten months, because of it. And now it's time for you, as an honorable man, to live up to your word. You said I could ask anything of you. I ask for this money.”

Jacob tapped his glass. Frenchy filled it. Jacob pondered the gin for a long time. Then he shook his head.

“I cannot do that. You don't understand. Ever since we lost Benny and the money, we're fighting just to stay even. If I can put this back into the system, we'll be fine, I know we will, but without it, the way things are going, a year from now Schultz will take over my operation. I can't let that happen. I won't. This is my work. This is my life.”

He got up and slapped the top back on the first box. “Weeks is right. We said a lot of things that night. I don't remember them all. You say that Benny really is dead and that breaks my heart, because he was so important to me. He was my son, my true son.”

Jacob was making excuses, but there was truth to what he was saying.

“You've got to understand, I can't let you have it. I need this.”

“You promised that—”

“No!” He spun around to face her. “There's nothing more to say. This is my money. I'm taking it. Weeks, get the boxes.”

As Mercer Weeks stacked the crates, Anna turned and glanced at me. I nodded so that she was the only one who could see it. But Connie caught it, and maybe Marie Therese, too.

Weeks held the two boxes like they weighed nothing. At the elevator, Jacob turned back to Anna and started to say something but just stood there.

As the elevator doors opened, Pauley Domo jumped up and said, “Hey, wait a minute, this isn't supposed to be happening.”

Anna cut him off, “Shut up, Pauley. We're leaving. Help Nana. Eddy, don't hurt him.”

She slipped into her long black coat and as she was leaving said, “See you around, Jimmy. Thanks for nothing.”

After they were gone, we loaded up our cases of gin. My guys were asking all sorts of questions, and I didn't have any answers.

Back at the speak, we unloaded and they set about cleaning up Vittorio's kitchen. I went down to the cellar. The other two crates were where we left them. I wrestled them out and loaded them into the dumbwaiter. Back upstairs, I found Connie waiting on the divan in my office. There was a cheese sandwich on my desk. She was working on a sandwich of her own and had a glass of beer. I sat at the desk and wolfed mine down.

When she'd finished she said, “Are you going to go with her? Joseph says you're going to sell this place to Herr Klapprott and take off with Anna or Soph, whatever her name is.”

“Fat Joe doesn't know shit from Shinola, pardon my French. I'm not interested in selling. I'm not interested in leaving. What about you? Are you going back to California?”

“I don't know. Nothing that's happened since I left home has been what I thought it was going to be, and then there's you and all this, and today has been stranger than anything else. We saw a couple of fights and went for a walk. We visited a neat place. Then we made mud pies with money and it ended with me holding a gun on a guy. What more could a girl ask for?”

I'd missed the part about the gun, but I guess it had been a busy day, and I could see that she might be having second thoughts.

“When you put it that way, it sounds different, but I hope to high hell we don't have another one like it.”

She laughed and picked up the empty plates and glass. On her way out she said, “Do you want to know about the money, I mean the box we started to separate?”

I said we'd see to that tomorrow.

Sometime before dawn Marie Therese came into my office and said they were finished. “I expect you'll want me to leave the front door unlocked for her,” she said, sounding snippy and pissed.

I told her to leave it as it was and followed her out the back door with Frenchy and Connie. I held the gate open as Frenchy drove through. Before she climbed up into the cab, Connie turned back, grabbed me by the neck, and gave me a hard kiss. She pushed away quickly and said, “Thanks for everything, Jimmy.” She might have been saying good-bye, I couldn't tell.

Back inside, Fat Joe and Arch Malloy were waiting for me in the bar. Fat Joe asked for the short Smith. I told him I was going to need it for a while longer.

He snorted. “Hell, she's coming here and you're going to give her the fucking money. What a sap.” He shook his head in disgust and left.

Ain't it the truth.

Malloy said, “You should know there's been a town car parked on the street for the past half hour. Driver and two people in the back, maybe more. Is there anything else you'll be needing me for, and what time do you want me to report this evening? Some of the fine points of my employment have yet to be defined.”

We settled on eight o'clock. I went behind the bar and poured a couple of greasecutters.

After a toast to nothing in particular, he said, “We've not known each other very long, but these have been eventful days, so I don't think you'll mind my making an observation about the young lady we met up there.”

I shook my head.

“I'll venture that you and she have a long and uneven relationship.”

“That's a fair way of putting it.”

We drank. After a time he said, “I've known women like that, two of them, and I was not able to hold on to either of them. I believe that is part of their nature and allure. We're blessed to enjoy them while we can. Someday, you must tell me about her.”

I agreed to do that. He left by the front door. Anna knocked moments later and hurried inside as soon as I unlocked it.

She'd brushed her hair, fixed her makeup, and found some high heels. The red dress was still ripped at the shoulder. She wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me as hard as she could. She was shivering, and when she pulled back she brushed tears off her cheeks. This time, she wasn't working on me. She was close to wrung out.

I poured another whiskey. She drank and said, “I guess I was naive to think Jacob would keep his word. He should have, goddammit, he owed me.”

“Yes, he did.”

She gave me a sharp, sudden look. “The rest of it's here, isn't it?” She sounded hopeful and almost angry. “You're not going to try to keep it.”

“Yes, it's here. It's your money. Maybe I'm putting my head in a noose taking what Jacob thinks is his. Maybe the next time I see Mercer Weeks, he won't be so accommodating.”

She shook her head. “You don't need to worry about that.”

“No, I didn't think so, but before we go any farther, I want to be sure that I understand how we got here and why. Let me start. You can correct the things I get wrong.”

“All right,” she said, sounding skeptical and suspicious.

“First, you had to come back here for the little girl and your grandmother. And you knew that once you were in the city, there was a fair chance you'd run across Jacob and Weeks, so you decided you could use some help, and that was me. Why?”

“Because we were always square with each other. That night in the Taft Suite, it was nice. Yeah, I enjoyed it, too, but you know what was more important? Remember that night we ran into that crazy angry guy and you shot him? That stayed with me. Then later, when I came here with Jacob and saw Jimmy Quinn's Place, I knew you'd turned out all right.”

She may have been buttering me up, but I didn't mind.

“And when that crazy half-breed had me chained up, I remembered what it was like with you, that spring when we went out to all those funny places, that was one of the best times of my life, maybe the best, but you don't want me to get all sappy.”

“And if everything had worked out perfectly, you'd have cooked up some Jimmy Quinn identification for some other guy to use at Railway Express.”

She shook her head. “No, I was going to take care of it myself. I bought Jimena Quinn papers in Chicago. That's probably where the Saengers spotted me.”

“And some of the Saengers and Pauley went after it for themselves, and we know what happened to them. And that brings us back to you and Mercer Weeks.”

“What do you mean, me and Mercer?”

“Come on, Anna, up there in your suite, I could tell there's something between you. At first I thought you'd been two-timing Jacob with him, but that's not it.”