Prohibition (20 page)

Doyle tried squeezing past him. His face shined with the glow of combat. “Get outta my way, Goddamn it! I didn’t get this far being a pussy, and I ain’t gonna start now. Now move!”

Quinn grabbed Doyle’s arm, but Doyle cried out and his knees buckled.

That’s when Quinn felt a sticky dampness near the shoulder where he grabbed him. The red splotch quickly spread along Doyle’s shirt.

Doyle had been shot.

Quinn eased Doyle down the wall to the floor and holstered his automatic under his left arm. He pulled off his own suit jacket, balled it up and put it behind Doyle’s head.

“It’s just a scratch, goddamn it,” Doyle said, biting off the pain. “Get me up.”

Quinn ripped open the sleeve of Doyle’s shirt at the shoulder. The bullet had entered just above the front of the socket and went straight out the back. The amount of blood told Quinn it might have cut an artery. Doyle would die if they didn’t stop the bleeding.

Quinn pulled off his tie and tied it as tight as he could around the wound. He yelled instructions to Cain over the gunfire. “Tear the rest of his shirt into strips and wrap it around the wound as tight as you can. Then take his belt and pull that even tighter. He’ll scream like hell, but it’s the only thing that’ll stop that bleeding until I come back.”

Cain grabbed Quinn’s arm as he moved to leave. “Where the hell are you going?”

Quinn pulled away and moved down the hall. “Just have your men concentrate their fire on the first floor of the warehouse. Tell them to keep an eye out for me. I’ll try to give them signals as I go.” He looked down at Doyle. “Just keep him alive until I get back.”

Quinn pulled the .45 from his holster and opened the back door. He brought up his automatic and crouched low in the doorway.

The back alley was empty.

He ran through the alley behind the building next door and took a quick left up the side alley toward the warehouse. The alley was long and narrow and couldn’t be seen from the warehouse. Perfect cover.

Quinn stopped just short of the mouth of the alley, inching up the rest of the way until he saw the hail of bullets flying back and forth between the Doyle headquarters and the first floor windows of the warehouse. He couldn’t see the last gunman on the roof of the warehouse, but was sure they were still there. Quinn knew he had to move and move now.

Quinn darted out in the street, bracing for the impact of a bullet. These were the moments Quinn lived for.

The volley between the warehouse and the club didn’t let up. He got to the other side and threw himself flat against the building next to the warehouse. No one had fired at him. From there, he saw how bad the headquarters had been hit. Every window in the two story building had been shot out. Black smoke billowed out from the second floor and roof.

Three of Doyle’s men lay dead in the street, twisted in various death poses. Blood stains spread long and wide beneath their bodies on the sidewalk. The cold air was filled with the acrid stench of gun smoke, death and blood.

Quinn’s skin burned as the salt from his sweat mixed with the black soot from the fire. He wiped his brow on his sleeve and kept moving, inching along the front of the building until he came close to the alley between it and the warehouse.

He looked over at his men in the headquarters, motioning for them to move their fire over further to his right. He didn’t want any stray bullets hitting him.

They shifted their fire, just like Quinn wanted. He bobbed his head twice around the corner to check the alley. Nobody there. He sprinted alongside the warehouse looking for a way inside. He found an old wooden door that looked as though it had been kicked in.

He peeked in fast. Nothing there. He moved inside. Fast and quiet. His .45 swept the area in front of him. It was a cavernous building filled with wooden crates and barrels of all shapes and sizes. Sawdust littered the floor and muffled his footsteps as he crept toward the front of the warehouse. Gunfire erupted at the front of the warehouse again. The sound echoed throughout the building. Quinn jogged down the aisle of crates in a crouched position. His gun led the way. He stopped when he got to the front loading bay, close enough to hear the three gunmen talking.

“How much ammo do these mugs got?” one of them asked. “They gotta be running dry by now.”

“Just keep firin’ til Eddie comes down and tells us to beat it,” said another.

Quinn crept up closer. He saw three men firing Thompsons through boarded windows. The floor was littered with spent shells. The gunman on the far left ran out of ammunition and dropped to one knee to reload. Two to one.

Quinn’s kind of odds.

Quinn opened fire on the middle gunman first, hitting him twice in the back. His fedora flew. The gunman at the far right spun around, but his rifle stuck in the boarded window as Quinn shot him twice in the chest. He tumbled back into a row of stacked crates.

The last gunman fumbled with his rifle to eject the spent ammo drum. His eyes went wide as he looked up at the approaching Quinn. He dropped the rifle and he kicked it away as he fell back, slipping on the piles of spent shells. He raised his shaking hands in front of him. His mouth trembled. His eyes watered.

Quinn approached the man slow. “How many more of you are in here?”

The gunman held his hands far in front of himself now, cringing with each step Quinn took toward him. “Please, God, please.”

“Concentrate, fucko.” Quinn stopped a few paces in front him and leveled his .45 at him. “How many more of you are in here?”

Then Quinn saw the man’s eyes flicker over to something above Quinn’s left shoulder. Quinn spun to his right and dropped to a crouch as a gunman on the cat walk opened up on him with a Thompson. Quinn fired back. Sparks flew from the railing. A red mist appeared behind the shooter’s head.

Gunman and rifle fell on opposite sides of the catwalk. The sound of wooden crates collapsing beneath the body echoed in the warehouse.

Quinn swept his pistol back around to cover the first gunman. No need. He’d been practically cut in half by his partner’s blast.

There were still the bastards on the roof to take care of. Quinn wasn’t sure how many rounds he had left in the magazine. He reloaded with a fresh clip anyway. He took the stairs of the metal staircase up to the catwalk two at a time. Fast. Quiet.

The steel door to the roof was open. Gravel crunched softly beneath his feet. He held his gun held out in front of him. From there, he saw and smelled the black smoke billowing up from the rooftop of Doyle’s headquarters. He saw the smoldering bodies of Evans and McCluskey, the two men he’d stationed there a few hours ago. The poor bastards died terrible deaths.

Quinn saw the last gunman slumped with his back to the ledge wall. He thought he’d gotten him with a ricochet and he was right. The cement from the balustrade had racked his face. Blood streamed from cuts on his eyelids and the sides of his face.

The gunman had heard someone coming toward him. He blindly pawed at the gravel around him. “Gussie? That you, Gussie? Did you get the bastard?”

Quinn waved down at Cain’s men and beckoned them over. They spilled into the street and into the warehouse. “Sorry, pal. The bastard got Gussie.”

The blind man tried kicking himself away from the voice, but he was already as far back against the wall as he could go. Quinn saw a broken Thompson on the ground next to him. A surge of pride filled him. Hell of a shot.

Quinn kicked the rifle away. The blind man stopped groping for it. He laid his hands flat on the gravel beside him. His breathing came quick, uneven but he held his water. He was waiting for the bullet.

Quinn figured him for a pro.

He crouched beside the blinded man, the .45 hung loose in his hand. “Who sent you?”

The blind man banged the back of his head against the ledge in frustration. He wiped at the blood from his eyes, but it kept flowing. “Just kill me and get it over with.”

Quinn liked his style. “I killed your entire crew, ace. It’s just you and me now. Who sent you to kill Archie Doyle?”

The blind man froze. “Ar...Archie Do...Doyle?” He swallowed hard. He looked like he would say something else, but didn’t. He swallowed hard again and began breathing faster.

Quinn had seen that look before. On Zito’s face when he told him he’d shot Fatty Corcoran.

“Archie Doyle,” the blind man said, “th..the New York boss?” “That’s right,” Quinn repeated. “Who sent you?”

The man gritted his teeth but kept his mouth shut. Quinn put the barrel of the gun to the man’s knee cap. “Start talking or you’ll be blind and a cripple.” He thumbed back the hammer for effect. “Last time, ace. Who sent you?”

The man’s breathing grew more shallow as the truth broke free. “I ain’t even from here and I sure as shit didn’t know we was sent to whack Archie Doyle.”

Quinn knew a .45 to the knee cap was a wonderful thing. “Where are you from?”

The blind man couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “We’re with Lenny Boo’s mob out of Kansas City.”

Quinn forced the gun barrel hard into the blind man’s knee. “Bullshit. Lenny Boo does business with us. Why would he want to take him out like this?”

“I...I...I don’t know,” the blinded man stammered. “He usually tells us who the mark is, but this time he only gave us an address. Said it was a contract job for this new partner of his.”

Now they were getting somewhere. “What new partner?” Quinn pressed the barrel harder into his knee. “What’s his name?”

“I don’t know!” the blind man screamed. “But Lenny said this building was owned by a guy who owed his new partner a lot of money. Told us to shoot it up to teach the owner a lesson. Said we were only supposed to open fire when the guy in the pearl suit left the building and the place was empty.”

Quinn took a step back. They were told to wait until Rothman left the building. Rothman had set up Doyle after all. Jesus. “How many of you did Lenny send?”

“T...ten of us out here to hit two places. That’s all I know,” the blind man said.

Quinn felt himself get dizzy. “What two places? Where are the other five guys?”

“This one and another joint up in midtown, The Longbow or something like that,” he screamed. “I don’t know for sure. I wasn’t in on that one.”

Quinn grabbed him by collar and yanked him up. “The Longford Lounge? Is that it, you son of a bitch? The Longford Lounge?” The man quickly nodded and Quinn squeezed harder. “When, goddamn it? When?”

“N...now, I think, before the joint opened,” the blind man stammered. “They wanted to hit the place while some of the employees were there. Maybe they were going to do it before this job, maybe after it. They didn’t tell me what they were going to do, I swear!”

Quinn heard Jimmy Cain and three other men from the headquarters spill out on to the roof. “You all right, Terry?”

Quinn let the blind man drop and holstered his pistol. “I thought I told you to stay with Archie.”

“Baker’s with him now,” Cain said. “I stopped the bleeding and I’ve got some of the boys putting him in the car to drive him over to Doc Brownell right now.”

“I’ll drive him over myself,” Quinn pushed past him toward the stairway. “Get some boys over to the Lounge right now. They’re sending another crew to hit us there, too.” He pointed back to the blind man. “Take that piece of shit to the safe house where we got Fatty stashed. Sit on him until

I get back. And don’t hurt him. Understand?”

Quinn and Cain rumbled down the metal stair case and bolted across the street to the headquarters. What was left of Doyle’s gunmen were guarding the front of the club and looked up when they saw Quinn running toward them.

“Get over to the Lounge. They’re going to hit us there any second,” Quinn bellowed. “Move!”

They all broke toward their sedans and started their engines. Those who couldn’t fit in the cars stood on the running boards, Thompsons beneath their overcoats.

Quinn ran into the club house and spotted Baker heading down the hall. “Call the Lounge and tell them to clear out of there, now!”

He found Doyle in one of the inner offices. His shirt had been cut away and used as a tourniquet for the gunshot wound in his left shoulder. Cain had done a good job with the dressing, but there was still a good amount of blood on his t-shirt and pants.

Doyle grabbed for the .38 on his lap when he heard someone had entered the room. He lowered it when he saw Quinn.

“What’s the sad puss for? If you think this is bad, you should’ve been with us up in Canada back in ’15. Me and Frank looked like Swiss cheese.” He swallowed hard and asked, “How many did we lose?”

Quinn grabbed an overcoat from the coat rack by the door and threw it around Doyle’s shoulders. “Five total. Evans and McCluskey on the roof and three more out front.”

Doyle winced. The lines in his face got even deeper. “What about the bastards?”

“All of them but one and we got him alive.”

Doyle’s face brightened. “Good boy. We’ll break him.”

“You’re not breaking anybody.” He grabbed Doyle around the waist and hauled him to his feet. “I’m getting you to a doctor and right now.”

Doyle was wobbly, but Quinn had a good grip on him. He led him out the front toward the Duesenberg.