Shamrock Alley (48 page)

“What happened to you?”

Mickey chuckled and drank some beer. “Christmas present,” he said.

“Could be a good look for you,” John said, and Mickey chuckled again. The bartender came over and set a bottle of Killian’s on the table, then sauntered away without a word. John took a swig and winced at the taste. It was too cold and too early to start drinking with the West Side boys. Resting the bottle back on the table, he turned again to Mickey. “So what’s up?”

Mickey had called him just an hour before, requesting they meet at the Cloverleaf. The agents monitoring the wire taps had immediately contacted Bill Kersh, who’d met John at the office and wired him up in case Jimmy Kahn started talking about the counterfeit money. Though there had been no mention of them discovering the money or plates, and though negatives had been taken from the Bowery warehouse over the wire taps, there was a good chance Mickey and Jimmy had already found out. It was in the hope that Jimmy might talk after all that John had worn the wire. Now, as he sat at a table beside Jimmy Kahn, such an idea seemed ridiculous. Was this guy playing smart, or had he just been lucky so far?

“Nothing’s up,” Mickey said, his eyes still on the television. “Haven’t seen you in a while. Wanted to make sure you were still around.”

“Where would I go?”

Mickey rolled his shoulder and brushed his greasy hair from his eyes. “Don’t know,” he said. “Sometimes people just disappear.”

“Well,” he said, “I’m still here. And I’m still interested.”

Chewing the inside of his cheek, Mickey only nodded. He seemed terrifically unenthusiastic. If they didn’t want to discuss the million-dollar counterfeit deal, then why had they called him here? In all the time he’d known them, and through all the drop-of-a-hat mood swings, one thing had remained constant: they were not sociable. They did not chill out with friends from the neighborhood, did not
do
anything. Even their drinking was less for fun and recreation than for occupying those long hours of daylight prior to an evening of crime and corruption.

When neither Mickey nor Jimmy responded, he said, “Ten percent’s good, but I’m having some trouble getting the money fronted—”

Mickey’s eyes swung in his direction. “Drink your beer.” The words seemed to tumble from Mickey’s mouth and lay solid and wet on the table. Mickey’s eyes remained on him a moment longer, impressing upon John the extent to which Mickey did not wish to discuss business at the moment. Beside him, Jimmy Kahn kept his eyes trained on the basketball game, uninterested in the wave of unease that had just rushed across their table.

John stared back at Mickey, unflinching, until Mickey finally turned back to the television.

He wanted to talk about the money but didn’t want to push it. He ordered another beer for both him and Mickey. John drank his torturously slow. Jimmy and Mickey watched the basketball game and, when he was able, John watched them. There was something so cavalier about them that made him want to crack them both across the teeth. And as the minutes ticked by and the daylight turned to dusk, he grew more and more irritable.

Finally, he pulled some bills from his jacket and threw them on the table. “It’s getting late,” he said. “Think I’m gonna hit the road.”

“Wait,” Jimmy said, standing up. “Hang around for one more drink.”

Jimmy went to the bar and leaned against one of the stools, waiting for Gorky McKean to return from the back room.

There was a moment of awkward, balanced silence between him and Mickey. That disapproving look was back in Mickey’s eyes, but a hint of something else seemed to soften his features. What was it?

Then, finally, Mickey said, “You been having any luck gettin’ those customers lined up?”

“Some.”

“How much longer you think you’ll need?”

He was waiting for Jimmy to leave the table
, he realized.
This way we could discuss whatever we want without involving his partner
.

Jimmy was playing it smart.

“I’m having some trouble getting some of the money up front,” he said. Maybe if he let on that he was having some difficulty lining up the money, Jimmy might be brought in to negotiate another deal.

“Ten percent’s a good deal,” Mickey said.

“It’s not that,” he said. “Just … some of my guys ain’t comfortable fronting that much money. You know what I mean?”

“Eight percent,” Mickey said.

John had been rubbing his hands together while they spoke. Now he stopped and just stared at Mickey. “What?”

“Eight percent,” Mickey repeated. “But you round up your end and we do the deal in two days.”

Apparently they didn’t know the money was missing. It was also apparent that, for whatever reason, they wanted desperately to move it. Eight percent was ridiculously low.

“Can you handle that?” Mickey asked him.

“Eighty grand in two days,” he muttered, considering. “Yeah, I can work that.”

Mickey appeared to relax. “Good,” he said, leaning back in his chair and bringing his beer to his lap. “Good.”

“Let me ask you something,” John said, nodding toward the bar and Jimmy Kahn. “He don’t trust me or what?”

“Jimmy?”

“I didn’t need to waste my whole goddamn day here waiting for him to leave the table …”

Mickey chugged the rest of his beer and said, “Don’t worry about Jimmy.”

Sometime after dark, John left the Cloverleaf and crossed West 57
^th
Street to his car. He turned over the engine and radioed Kersh, who was sitting in his own car farther down the street. Kersh was surprised Mickey had dropped the points so much and was not completely comfortable with Mickey’s sudden burst of generosity. John, on the other hand, was gratified that the deal had finally been set up. In two days, when Mickey discovered the money was missing, Jimmy Kahn would have to get involved. There would be no way around that. Mickey was crazy, but he wasn’t stupid enough to approach John alone. As far as Mickey and Jimmy knew, John had been going around the city collecting money from people expecting to buy counterfeit money. Neither Mickey nor Jimmy would allow that opportunity to pass them by.

Jimmy would get dirty …

Pulling out onto West 57
^th
Street, John forced his mind to switch gears. It was like living a double life, and the past two months had been draining. He felt like a man dangling by a wire, spinning in midair, the weight of his own body stressing the wire more and more. The last day of the year, and he could only hope the New Year would bring with it a sense of serenity.

He would take Katie to the hospital, and they would sit with his father for some time. Then they would go home together and wait out the rest of the year by themselves, in each other’s arms, in the dark.

He never knew he was being followed.

A
DARKENED TENEMENT HALLWAY
. T
HROUGH THE WALLS
, soft cries of a baby could be heard. Then after a few moments, the crying stopped.

Mickey O’Shay crept up a narrow bend of stairs, his shadow like a stretched black cloth on the wall beside him. At the second floor, he paused on the stairwell landing before pushing through a large metal door. The hallway reeked of urine and mildew, sour like rotting citrus fruit. His footfalls were muted on the floor. Someone’s television was turned up too loud. At the end of the hall, a cat froze and stared directly at him beneath a darkened window, the feline’s eyes reflecting the bulb in the single light fixture in the middle of the hallway ceiling.

Slinking like a thief along the gloomy corridor, Mickey paused outside an apartment door. Sliding one hand from his coat pocket, he knocked twice—hard—on the door. Slipping his hand back into his coat, he turned his head casually from side to side, examining the length of the hallway. The cat continued to stare at him, its eyes glowing like headlamps.

Bolts turned. The door opened a crack, and Tressa Walker peered out. When she glimpsed Mickey standing on the other side of the door, all life seemed to drain from her face.

“Mickey …”

“How you been, Tressa? You alone?”

“Yes.” The word was out of her mouth before she could avoid saying it. “What do you want?”

“Frankie-balls around?”

“I haven’t seen him. What do you want?”

“Jimmy’s got your money down in the car,” he said. “It took us a while to get around to you.” As part of their deal, Mickey had agreed to pay Tressa 5 percent on any counterfeit deal he worked with Esposito, seeing how she’d introduced them. However, as Mickey was prone to do when he knew he could get away with it, he hadn’t fed her a dime.

Now, at the mention of money, some of the girl’s anxiety was sloughed off. “Why didn’t you just bring it up?”

“Didn’t want Frankie to see it. Come down.”

Greed has a tendency to impede judgment and blind the eyes to truth. Had Tressa Walker been a different person, she might have recognized the absurdity of Mickey’s proposition. But having grown up in an abusive West Side household, having gotten involved with hard drugs and truculent older men at a very young age, Tressa Walker was
never
going to be a different person.

She grabbed her coat and stepped out into the hallway. “Not too long,” she told Mickey. “My baby’s asleep inside.”

They moved down the stairwell quickly and out into the frigid courtyard beneath the winter moon. Snow covered the ground and reflected the moonlight. It was then, as they walked across the courtyard, that the preposterousness of the situation must have struck Tressa, for she paused briefly in mid-stride and went suddenly still. Turning, Mickey glared at her, his form hunched yet imposing in the darkness.

“What?” he said.

“Where …” She cleared her throat. “Where’s Jimmy?”

“In the car,” he answered, “just like I said. What’s the matter? You want your money or not?”

And for the second time that evening, she forced herself to follow Mickey O’Shay.

Jimmy Kahn’s Cadillac sat idling along Tenth Avenue, twirling snowflakes dancing in the headlight beams. Mickey moved slightly ahead as they walked and opened the back door of the Cadillac for Tressa.

She stood along the curb, watching the traffic pass along the street, unwilling to get into the car.

“Come on,” Mickey said, “it’s freezing out here.”

He put a hand on her back and urged her into the back seat. It was the strength of his hand that broke her will and allowed her to climb into the Cadillac’s back seat. Mickey climbed in after her, slamming the door.

Jimmy sat in the front by himself, smoking a cigarette and grasping the steering wheel. His dark eyes looked her over in the rearview mirror. Then he took the car out of park and spun the wheel, pulling into the traffic along Tenth Avenue.

“Where are we going?” she said, her voice suddenly trembling.

“Relax,” Mickey told her, pulling a pack of Camels from his coat and shaking a stick into his mouth. He lit it with a frayed book of matches from the Black Box strip club. “Enjoy the sights.”

She brought her knees up to her chest and leaned against the window, as far away from Mickey O’Shay as she could manage. Her face was frozen, expressionless, and wide-eyed. “Mickey …” she managed. Her voice sounded too dry, not her own.

“Tell us about Esposito,” Mickey said. He took a long drag from his Camel and blew the smoke toward the Cadillac’s ceiling. The entire car was filling with dense blue smoke.

A small moan escaped her throat.

“Who is he really?” Jimmy asked from the front seat, again eyeing her up in the rearview.

“I told you already,” she said, leaning forward, her hands suddenly clenched together. “Everything I
know, you
know.”

“You’re lying,” Mickey said. His voice was serene and mellow, like ice cream melting in the sun. “I’m so goddamn tired of listening to liars.”

“We just want to hear the truth, Tressa,” Jimmy said. “You bring this guy to us, and nobody’s ever heard of him. We just wanna know who the hell he is.”

“I told you!”
she screamed, startled by the ferocity and terror in her voice. A single tear spilled down her right cheek, and she began to sob gently.

“Calm down,” Jimmy told her. “Mickey, give her a cigarette—get her to calm down.”

“Good idea,” Mickey said. He leaned over to her, holding out his cigarette. “Try this. Maybe
then
you’ll talk.”

Like a striking snake, Mickey’s hand shot out and grabbed Tressa’s chin, pushing her face against the Cadillac’s window. She screamed and tried to twist her head away. Struggling, her arms flailed hopelessly against Mickey as he tried to slide the cigarette into her mouth. He was laughing until one of her hands struck his bruised cheek. Howling, he slapped her across the face, gripped her jaw harder, then forced the burning end of the cigarette into her left nostril. She screamed and kicked, the back of her head knocking against the window, while Mickey held the cigarette in place. In his anger, he pinched her nose closed and heard the embers of the cigarette sizzle her flesh. With one final shake of her head, he pushed her back against the door and let go. The cigarette slipped from her nose as she sobbed and moaned. Mickey watched her with little interest as he slid another cigarette from the pack, lit it, inhaled.