The Gangster (29 page)

“Where does Francesca live?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t
know
? How could you not know where a woman you were seeing lives?”

“She never let me take her home. She was very proper.”

“‘Proper’?” Isaac Bell echoed sharply. As good as this plan was, he was still angry enough to throw Archie Abbott off the speeding train.

“Ladylike. I mean . . . modest . . . Well, you know what I mean.”

“Where would you meet up?”

“The Waldorf-Astoria.”

“How’d you manage that?” Bell asked. Archie was a socially prominent New Yorker, welcome in any Blue Book drawing room, but the Abbotts had lost their money in the Panic of ’93 and he had to live on his detective salary.

“Francesca’s quite well-off, and her husband had business at the hotel, so she has a good arrangement with the management.”

“You said you don’t know where she lives. Now you’re saying she lives at the Waldorf?”

“No, no, no. She just books us a room.”

“When were you supposed to see her next?”

“Tomorrow afternoon, actually.”

“Will she show up?”

“I have no idea.”

“I think she will,” said Bell.

“How do you know?”

“She will be curious about what you’ll tell her next.”

Again, Abbott hung his head. “How long are you going to rub salt in the wound?”

“Until I am absolutely sure that I can override a powerful impulse to knock your block off.”

Archie was late.

Francesca Kennedy had already luxuriated with a hot soak in the porcelain tub. Now, wrapped in a Turkish robe, she curled up in an armchair and let her eyes feast on the beautiful hotel room. It had a fine bureau with an etched-glass mirror, a marquetry headboard that matched the bureau, and French wallpaper. She peeked through the drapes; it was snowing again. Warm and cosy, she settled in with the afternoon newspaper.

Standing in the rocky cavern 1,100 feet under the bed of the Hudson River a week after he returns from Panama, President Theodore Roosevelt will press a key and electrically fire the blast to “hole through” the Hudson
River Siphon Tunnel of the Catskill Aqueduct . . .

Footsteps were muffled in the Waldorf’s carpeted halls, and she lowered the paper repeatedly to glance at the crack under the door, waiting for Archie’s shadow to fall across the sill.

“Are you an opera singer, sir?”

Antonio Branco gave the elevator runner a dazzling smile. “If I-a to sing-a, you will-a run holding ears. No, young fellow, I only look-a like one.”

Americans scorned and despised Italian immigrants, but they were amused by well-off Italians who dressed with style. A cream-colored cape, a matching wide-brimmed Borsalino, an ivory walking stick, and a waxed mustache did the job. His masquerade wouldn’t fool a Van Dorn detective, or anyone who had met him face-to-face, but it drew salutes from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel doormen and bows from house detectives. Across the lobby and into the gilded elevator, he was questioned only by the starstruck boy running it.

“Floor, sir?”

“
Sesto!
That means floor seeze.
Pronto!
”

Francesca had worked her way to the back pages, where features were tongue-in-cheek.

A far-flung correspondent reports that our country cousins upstate in rural Orange County awakened twice this week to outlandish rumors. First, as our readers in New York and Brooklyn learned, too, the Catskill Aqueduct tunnel under the Hudson River—the so-called Siphon, or Moodna-Hudson-Breakneck Pressure Tunnel and Gauging Chamber, as the waterworks engineers dub it—was breeched by the river, flooding the tunnel and destroying all hopes of completing the aqueduct ahead of the next water famine. Happily, this proved not the case. The plumber was summoned. The leak was small and has already been patched.

New rumors flew hot and heavy this morning. One had the Sheriff of Orange County raiding Raven’s Eyrie, the fabled estate of the Culps, whose many generations have accumulated great fortunes in river commerce, railroad enterprises, and Wall Street dexterity. Locked up were a dozen men found there. Speculation as to why the Sheriff raided Raven’s Eyrie prompted new rumors, the most intriguing of which had the Sheriff hot on the heels of Italian immigrant Black Hand fugitive Antonio Branco.

It was unclear why a gangster (formerly purveyor to the city’s Catskill Aqueduct) who is running from the law would choose to go
to ground in a plutocrat’s fortified retreat. It was equally unclear who the men arrested were. Hearsay ran the gamut of imaginings, from immigrant laborers, to private detectives, to Tammany contract grabbers.

The Sheriff of Orange County denies the event ever took place and displayed for our correspondent his empty jail.

Mr. J. B. Culp’s offices in Wall Street report that the magnate is currently steaming across the continent on his private train and therefore unavailable to comment.

The Italian Branco left no forwarding address.

Francesca flung off the terry robe and pulled on her clothing. She
knew
Branco. Not as a gangster, but as a wealthy grocer who had set her up in a small apartment with a stipend that allowed her to get off the streets. He hadn’t visited it in two years—not since, she realized now, she had been summoned to confession with the Boss. She had lived on tenterhooks, wondering when it would stop, but he had kept sending money and kept paying the rent.

She was stuffing her things into her bag when a shadow fell on the sill.

The lovely room was suddenly a trap. An interior door connected to an adjoining room. She gripped the knob with little hope. Locked, of course. She had only rented the one room, not the suite. She backed up to the window and pulled the drapes
with even less hope. No fire escape; the Waldorf was a modern building with indoor fire stairs. No balcony, either. Only the pavement of 33rd Street, six stories down. She carried no knife on this job, no razor, no weapon that would warn Archie Abbott that she was trouble.

Antonio Branco opened the door with a key and swept into the room.

Francesca Kennedy backed against the window. “I was just reading about you.”

“I imagined you were.”

Though her mind was racing, nearly overwhelmed with fear, she was struck, as always, by how handsome a man he was. There was a sharpness to him she had not seen before, an alertness he had hidden, which made him even more vital. But when his expression hardened, he looked suddenly so familiar that she glanced at her own face in the bureau mirror, then back at his.

His eyes were as dead as hers when she did a job.

Branco’s flickered at the window, and she realized instantly how he would do her. Francesca Kennedy wouldn’t be the first young and beautiful suicide to jump to her death from an expensive hotel room. Fell for the wrong man?

He turned around to lock the door and was reaching for the latch, when it flew inward with explosive force, smashing into his face and hurling him across the room. The armchair in which Francesca had been reading stopped his fall and he kept his feet, blood pouring from his nose.

Archie Abbott burst through the door he had kicked open.

The tall, golden-haired Isaac Bell was right behind him.

The detectives bounded at Branco like wolves.

Branco had lightning reflexes. The Italian had retained his grip on his walking stick and managed to twist it around as Archie charged. He rammed the tip into Archie’s gut. Archie doubled over. Isaac Bell knocked the stick out of Branco’s hand. It flew into the drapes and dropped at Francesca’s feet. When she picked it up, she was shocked by the heavy weight of its steel core.

Bell and Branco traded punches, grappled and fell against the
chair with Bell on top. Branco clamped his arms around the tall detective in a crushing grip. He surged to his feet. His bloodied face contorted with herculean effort, he lifted Bell’s hundred seventy-five pounds off the floor. Bell broke his grip and pounded Branco’s ribs. They tumbled past the bed. Bell crashed into the bureau, shattering the mirror. Branco whirled to the door. But Archie was up again, throwing a hard, expert punch that drove the gangster to his knees.

Francesca held the walking stick in both her hands and swung it like a baseball bat. It connected with a loud thud, and she dropped the stick and ran into the hall. Antonio Branco’s eyes opened wide in disbelief as Archie Abbott sagged to the floor.

Branco snatched up the stick. Isaac Bell was back on his feet. Branco aimed for his head, but Bell was too fast for him and ducked the blow. Branco swung again, but, as he did, the half-conscious Archie Abbott kicked him. Thrown off balance, Branco missed Bell’s head but caught him instead in the back of his knee. Bell’s leg flew out from under him, and Branco was out the door.

He saw Francesca racing down the hall.

“Come with me,” he called.

“You’ll kill me.”

She darted into a service stair. Branco ran past it to the end of the hall where, before going to her room, he had confirmed an escape route down a stair to the hotel kitchens.

Isaac Bell tore after them.

The hall was empty. He ran full tilt, spotted a service stair, and wrenched open its door, which emitted a scent of fresh linen. Then he saw blood farther along on the hall carpet. He ran to it,
spotted another stain, and kept going until he found a second service stair.

It was dimly lit and smelled of cooking grease.

He cocked his ear to the sound of running feet and plunged after it. Three flights down, he passed a waiter, who was slumped, stunned, against the wall. Three more flights and he reached the kitchen at the bottom of the steps. Men were shouting. A woman screamed. Bell saw cooks in toques helping a white-jacketed sous-chef to his feet. They saw him coming and scattered.

“Where’d he go?” Bell shouted.

“Into the alley.”

They pointed at the door. Bell shoved through it. The alley was empty but for a set of footprints in the snow. At the end of it, crowds were hurrying along 33rd. Bell ran to the street. The sidewalks were packed and he couldn’t see farther than fifty feet in the snow. Branco could have run either way. He hurried back into the kitchen.

“Did you see a woman with him?”

“No.”

He asked directions to the laundry. A cook’s boy took him there and he began to search for Francesca Kennedy. Frightened laundresses pointed mutely at a laundry cart. Bell seized it with both hands and turned it over.

Isaac Bell borrowed manacles from a house detective and marched Francesca Kennedy back to the wrecked hotel room. Angry Waldorf detectives paced in the hall, steering curious guests past the
open door. Archie was slumped on the armchair, holding his head, attended by the hotel doctor.

“Why did you hit me?” he asked Francesca. “Why didn’t you hit Branco? He was going to kill you.”

Francesca asked matter-of-factly, “What’s the difference? You were going to arrest me, and it’ll kill me when they hang me.”

Bell eased his grip on her arm and said quietly, “Why don’t we discuss ways we can arrange things so they don’t hang you?”

She raised her blue eyes to smile up at him and Bell forgave Archie for most of his stupidity. As he had told Marion, Francesca Kennedy was intoxicating—and then some.

“Shall we talk?” Bell prompted.

“I like talking,” said Francesca.

“So I’ve heard.”

She said, “Could we, by any chance, talk over dinner? I’m starving.”

“Good idea,” said Bell. “We’ll have dinner at Captain Mike’s.”

“I don’t know it.”

“It’s on West 30th in the Tenderloin.”

Captain “Honest Mike” Coligney of the 19th Precinct Station House posted a police matron outside the room he had provided for Isaac Bell to interrogate his prisoner.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Isaac,” said Coligney. “That woman is poison.”

“I don’t know any one more familiar with Antonio Branco than she.”

“Even though they never met face-to-face.”

“He gave orders. She carried them out.”

Bell stepped inside the room and closed the door.

“What would you like for dinner?” was his first question.

“Could I have a steak?”

“Of course.”

“Could we possibly have a glass of wine?”

“I don’t see why not.” He stepped out of the room and handed Mike Coligney twenty bucks. “Best restaurant in the neighborhood—steaks, the fixings, a couple of glasses of wine, and plenty of dessert.”

“You’re wasting your dough,” Coligney said. “What makes you think she’ll turn on him? When she had a choice of braining Branco or Detective Abbott, she chose the detective.”

“The lady likes to talk and the deck is stacked against her.”

“As it damned well should be.”

“She knows that. From what she told me on the way over, she would be the last to claim angelhood.”

Bell went back inside. Francesca had remained where he had left her, seated at a small, rough wooden table that was bolted, like both chairs, to the concrete floor.

“You know, Isaac . . . It’s O.K. if I call you Isaac, isn’t it? I feel I’ve known you forever the way Archie talked about you . . . I’ve been thinking. I always knew it had to happen some time.”

“What had to happen?”

“Getting nailed.”

“Happens to the best,” said Bell.

“And the worst,” Francesca fired back. “You know something? Archie was my favorite job the Boss ever gave me.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Bell. “Archie is excellent company.”

“I had to buy wonderful clothes to be with him. Archie’s used to the best girls. I could spend like a drunken sailor and the Boss never complained.”

“Do you remember the first job you did for Branco?”

“I didn’t know it was Branco.”

“Of course not. You got it from the ‘priest,’ so to speak. Do you remember it?”

“Sure. There was this guy who owned a bunch of groceries in Little Italy. The Boss said he had to go. But it had to look natural.”

“How did you learn to make a murder look like natural causes?”

“Not that kind of natural.
Natural!
The grocery guy had a taste to do certain stuff to girls and he’d pay a lot for it. But everybody knows if a guy goes around houses doing that, one of these days some girl’s going to get mad enough to stab him. So when he got stabbed, he got stabbed, naturally.”

“Why did the Boss want him killed?”

“I never knew until now it was to get the guy’s business. It’s how Branco got to the big time, owning a string of shops. Big step on his way to the aqueduct job, right? Now he’s on top . . . Or was.”

“Could you tell me about the next job?”

Isaac Bell coaxed her along, story to story, and Antonio Branco emerged as a criminal as ruthless as Bell had expected. But the
gangster was unerring in his ability to couple effective methods to precise goals.

Captain Coligney interrupted briefly when dinner arrived.

Francesca ate daintily and kept talking.

Bell asked, “How did you happen to meet the Boss?”

“I don’t really know. I got in trouble once—big trouble—and out of nowhere some gorillas come to my rescue, paid off the cops. One second I think I’m going up the river, next I’m scot-free. Then I get my first message to go to confession.” She cut another bite of porterhouse, chewed slowly, washed it down with a sip of wine, and reflected, “Sometimes things really work out great, don’t they?”

“Did you help him get the aqueduct job?”

“I sure did! I mean, I didn’t know then. But now . . . There was this guy, celebrating a big, big deal. Practically takes over a whorehouse for a weekend. Champagne, girls, the whole deck of cards. I went to confession. Next thing you know, the guy is dead. Before he died, he told me he won this huge city contract to provision the aqueduct. Guess who got the contract after he died?”

“Branco.”

“You got it, Isaac.”

“What was the last job you did for him?”

“Archie.”

“Were you supposed to kill him?”

Francesca Kennedy looked across the table at Bell and cocked an eyebrow. “Is Archie dead?”

Bell gave her the laugh she expected and said, “O.K. So what did Branco tell you to do with Archie?”

“Listen.”

“For anything in particular?”

“Anything to do with your Black Hand Squad.”

“What did you hear?”

“Not one damned thing.”

“But you learned about the raid?”

“Nothing until then. That was the first thing Archie spilled. And the last, I guess,” she added, glancing about the windowless room.

Bell asked her how she had informed Branco, now that he wasn’t a priest anymore, and she explained a system of mailboxes and public telephones.

“How about before Archie?”

“I did a double. A couple of cousins. You know what the Wallopers are?”