Shamrock Alley (22 page)

Alphabet City, poisoned by the alkaline stink of the East River, embraced an accumulation of filthy, destitute tenements and squalid, fire-ravaged shops. A few of the buildings had been bought and sold and bought again over the years, traded like cards in a Vegas poker game, casualties of the gradual decline of the East Village. It wasn’t uncommon for police to pull a bullet-riddled body from Tompkins Square Park, the victim already gray with rot and age. Likewise, there was always a pusher to be found—whatever you wanted you could have … for a price. In certain areas of the city, drugs were controlled by the authorities to the best of their ability. But drugs were still rampant here, as they were in Hell’s Kitchen, their distribution fueled by budding entrepreneurs straight from the neighborhood public schools. It was not unusual to find a frozen, malnourished corpse in the lot behind one of the tenements, the corpse’s arms black from shooting up, the face frozen in a rigor of perpetual agony.

There was little traffic along the back streets as Jimmy and Mickey drove through the neighborhood. Children of Hell’s Kitchen, neither man traveled outside the safety of his neighborhood often, and they could probably count on one hand between them the number of times they’d been to Alphabet City. Hell’s Kitchen was a microcosm of the entire city—the entire world, really—and one needn’t go beyond that sphere for the length of a lifetime. In fact, if someone left Hell’s Kitchen for an extended period, nine times out of ten it was usually to do time upstate.

On the seat between them was a small ledger bound in dark brown vinyl. The name H. GREEN, embossed in gold letters, was centered on the front cover of the book. It was bound with metal curls of wire.

“How’d the meeting go with that guy John?” Jimmy asked as he drove. Though several days had passed since Mickey and John’s meeting Thanksgiving morning, Jimmy was only now bringing it up. That was how he operated: questions were asked when he felt the time was right. Period.

“Pissed him off having to come out for nothing.”

“He smell funny to you?”

“No—but it’s early.”

“Just the same,” Jimmy said, “I only want you dealin’ with him for now. No sense both of us gettin’ fronted. When you meeting again?”

“I said I’d give him a couple days to get his money together,” Mickey said. Smoking a cigarette and gazing disinterestedly out the passenger window, he rubbed a hand along the nape of his neck. A group of kids were playing ball in the street up ahead, and Jimmy slowed to a cool fifty-five before barreling through. “So what’s this guy’s name?”

“Who?”

“The guy.” Mickey tapped the ledger with two fingers.
“This
guy.”

“Tony Marscolotti,” Jimmy said. “We got him for five grand. Let me do the talking. You just keep quiet—and don’t say nothin’ about the book. Anybody asks about the book, you tell ‘em we bought it.”

Mickey snorted—a sound which conveyed his mild irritation at Jimmy for even having to bring such a thing up: Mickey O’Shay talked to
nobody
about
nothing
.

They pulled up before a row of small shops—a dry cleaner, a bakery, a barber shop, a camera shop—and stepped out into the cold. Mickey followed Jimmy across the street to a small Italian delicatessen.

Two young kids in knitted caps sat on a bench outside the deli, splitting a messy-looking meatball hero. As Jimmy and Mickey entered the shop, both boys glanced up in their direction without moving their heads.

There were a few customers milling about inside, all women. The place smelled strongly of provolone cheese and freshly baked bread. The walls buckled with shelves. Behind the counter slicing ham, a teenage boy in a paper hat watched them swagger around the store but said nothing. Mickey, his hands in his coat pockets, his head down as if to keep an eye on his feet, ambled over to a rack of jarred goods. With little interest, he reached out, unscrewed ajar of green olives, and systematically sucked the pimentos from a handful of them, discarding the little green husks onto the floor.

Jimmy happened to glance up and spot the tortoiseshell bulb of a theft prevention mirror hanging above a restroom door. In it, the entire store was distorted but visible. Directly above him, a lethargic ceiling fan worked in dizzying rotations. A metal chain hung from the center of the fan, remarkably still.

When a thick, ruddy-faced man in his forties shuffled out of the back room, Jimmy moved up against the front counter, his chest nearly leaning on the glass display case. He rolled his eyes down to the assortment of meats and cheeses behind the glass, then brought his eyes back up. Again, he caught the teenager in the paper hat stare in his direction. Then the kid swung his gaze over to Mickey. Mickey had sidled up to the other end of the counter and was standing with one foot over the line that prohibited customers from stepping behind the service counter. He was chewing the inside of his cheek, having finished with the pimentos.

“Tony Marscolotti,” Jimmy said as the ruddy-faced man swept by behind the counter. It was not a question—hardly ever did Jimmy Kahn sound like he was unsure about anything, even a person’s name. His questions always sounded more like statements, his statements like accusations, and his accusations like death threats.

The ruddy-faced man slowed but did not look up. He was busy carrying a tray of freshly baked rolls. “What can I do for you?” Marscolotti said.

“We’re here to collect your vig for Horace Green,” Jimmy said.

At the mention of Green’s name, Marscolotti paused, setting the tray of rolls on the counter. He brought his round face up and looked at Jimmy Kahn first with an air of anxiety, then derision. “You ain’t Green.”

“We’re collecting for him now.”

Marscolotti’s tiny black eyes migrated to where Mickey stood at the far end of the counter. Marscolotti didn’t stare at him long, however, and was quick to return his gaze to Jimmy Kahn. “I didn’t borrow no money from you,” Marscolotti said.

“You owe five grand?”

“Green wants his money,” Marscolotti said, “tell him to come down and get it himself. Or call me and tell me you’re pickin’ it up.”

Mickey materialized behind Jimmy Kahn, the muscles of his face relaxed, a look of indifference in his eyes. Marscolotti caught that look, and something in its casualness frightened him.

“You want him to call ya?” Jimmy almost laughed. He cocked his head in Mickey’s direction and he, too, nearly cracked a smile. “He wants Green to call him so he knows who we are.”

“I want you outta my store,” Marscolotti said.

“Tell ‘im who we are, Jimmy,” Mickey said. “Let him know we’re okay.”

“Couple Irish kids from Hell’s Kitchen here to pick up their money,” Jimmy said, his eyes on Marscolotti. “Maybe you heard of us—Jimmy Kahn and Mickey O’Shay …”

At the mention of their names, Marscolotti’s expression fell. His eyes blinked very fast several times in succession, and the muscles in his jaws clenched like machinery. In Tony Marscolotti, the sudden transition from animosity to fear was a rather noticeable one.

Then Jimmy Kahn
did
smile, exposing a row of white, even teeth. “Oh, you heard of us? You think maybe we can move this thing along?”

“Green’s got you two collecting for him now?” Marscolotti asked. The tip of a thick, purple tongue poked between his lips, moistened them.

“You don’t worry about Green,” Jimmy said. “You got that five grand you owe?”

“Five grand.” The words came out sickly, devoid of substance. Beside Marscolotti, the teenager in the paper hat set down the sliced ham, moved to a large plastic sink behind the counter, and remained there with his hands on the lip of the basin, his back facing the disturbance.

“Make it six,” Jimmy said with little humor. “Consider it a ‘transfer fee’ for being such a moron.”

“You fellas don’t …” But Marscolotti’s words died in the air. The looks on Jimmy’s and Mickey’s faces, which had at first angered the proprietor, now caused his mouth to dry up and his tongue to feel too big for his mouth.

A woman in a mink coat approached and placed some items on the counter.

“Danny,” Marscolotti called from the corner of his mouth. The teenager in the paper hat jerked his shoulders at the mention of his name. “Help this woman down the other end of the counter, will ya?”

Danny turned and moved to the counter without looking at either his boss or his boss’s new friends. He reached out and slid the items the woman had placed on the counter down to the register at the opposite end of the shop.

“We don’t got all day,” Jimmy said.

“I don’t have five—
six,”
he corrected himself at the last second, “I been payin’ Green a grand a week. One fifty of that is vig.”

“Okay,” Jimmy said, “we’ll keep the same arrangement. Let’s have it.”

“I don’t have it now. He usually comes the end of the week.”

“You’re wastin’ our fuckin’ time,” Jimmy said. “You ain’t paid nothin’ in the past few weeks. Green ain’t been around. Get the money.”

The woman at the cash register cocked her head in their direction, but did not look at them. Danny, as if attempting to rescue the woman from impending disaster, quickly drew her attention to some sale items behind the counter.

Marscolotti shook his head. “I’ll see what I got in the back …”

“Find it, or I’ll take it out of the goddamn register. Mickey’ll take a walk with you,” Jimmy said, and Mickey was already moving behind the counter, his hands still stuffed into the pockets of his coat. Head down, hair hanging in his face, he looked like a kid about to be reprimanded … except for the look in his eyes—those burning embers of detachment, of insanity that loomed just below the surface. Mickey O’Shay had once gotten into an argument with someone at the Cloverleaf. And with Mickey, arguments never
stayed
arguments: he’d beaten the guy pretty badly with a stool—busted the guy’s jaw, wrist, ankle, some ribs—and as the guy managed to crawl out of the tavern and over to a police officer who happened to be passing down the street, Mickey stormed from the Cloverleaf and took the top of the guy’s head off with his .38. The cop’s uniform had been sprayed with blood, the cop’s face a startled white.

Marscolotti, with Mickey close on his heels, slipped into the storage room behind the counter. Here, the walls were stocked with shelves of packaged and canned goods still stowed away inside the boxes in which they’d been shipped. Heat from an enormous brick oven blistered the paint from the walls, and the smell of baking bread and seasonings filled the stuffy room. A small wooden desk had been pushed into a niche in the wall at the back of the room, its surface littered with receipts and paperwork. Above it, hanging on the wall by a nail, was a portable radio tuned low and playing Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues.” And beside the radio hung a framed poster of an Italian countryside.

Marscolotti led Mickey to the desk, pulled out the chair, and bent with some difficulty to the last drawer. Mickey’s eyes worked across the paperwork on the man’s desk, finding nothing of interest. When the drawer came open, his eyes darted to the man’s hands first, then to the interior of the drawer. Inside were a number of rumpled business envelopes and a steel case that resembled a fisherman’s tackle box.

“I didn’t know you guys were in business with Horace Green.” Marscolotti said, pulling the steel box from the drawer and setting it on his lap. He dipped his right hand into the front of the apron he wore and fished out a tangled ball of keys.

“We ain’t,” Mickey said. “He sold us the book.”
After we shot him and chopped him up into little pieces, the lousy Jew bastard
, was what Mickey wanted to say. The memory caused his eyes to gleam.

“Green don’t usually come to my place of business …”

“We ain’t Green,” Mickey said.

“It’s bad for business, coming around—”

“Shut the fuck up and open the box.”

Hands visibly shaking, Marscolotti hurried through his collection of keys until he selected the appropriate one, slipped it into the lock on the box, and popped the lip. Inside, assorted stacks of bills had been stuffed into a slide-away compartment. Before Marscolotti could take the bills out, Mickey’s hand was already in there, yanking out the cash like someone tugging at a zipper on a stubborn pair of pants.

“This is? This all you got?”

Marscolotti looked shaken. “Come on …”

Mickey reached down and grabbed the box from Marscolotti’s lap, tore the compartments out, shook it, then tossed it on top of the man’s desk. It slammed hard against the wood, the sound echoing off the walls.

“Don’t look like no grand to me,” Mickey said, flipping through the thin stacks of bills. “You’re gonna be a pain in the ass. I can tell. You’re gonna get me fuckin’ started.”

“Relax,” Marscolotti pleaded. “I’ll get it out of the register.”

“Move,” Mickey said, grabbing Marscolotti by the scruff of his neck and yanking him up out of his chair. He pushed the smaller man back toward the store and out of the storage room. Out here, the customers had left and now Jimmy stood against the cash register, one finger gently massaging the faint scar at his chin. At that moment, if Jimmy’s mother were able to see him, she would have sworn her son looked identical to his father, who’d been a respectable accountant and good husband.

“How much?” Jimmy called.

Mickey stepped around the counter and sauntered over to his partner. In his right hand he waved the few stacks of bills. “Looks like seven hundred,” he said.

“Enough with the bullshit,” Jimmy said, turning to face Marscolotti who, by now, had secreted himself in the space in the wall between two shelves. Yet he was a heavyset man and the majority of his bulk did not fit in the space.

“Let me check the register,” Marscolotti said, “I’ll give you as much as I can.”

But Jimmy Kahn did not even let Marscolotti finish before he was moving across the floor and to the front door. There was a wedge of wood propped beneath the door, and Jimmy kicked this out with two swift knocks of his foot. He slammed the door shut and yanked down the plastic shade, covering the door’s window. Outside, the two young boys just finishing up their meatball hero looked up, startled, and took to their heels without further provocation.