Here in the Bowery there aren’t many heroes. Guys like my friend Urbain Ledoux, or Mr. Zero as he likes to call himself, are rare indeed. Zero and I have been friends since ’21 when I, still a wet-behind-the-ears rookie, along with a whole bunch of other bluecoats, was called up to Bryant Park to shut down somebody causing some disturbance for the labor unions. Turns out this guy, Ledoux, was planning to auction off jobless vets in the park to help them get work and raise funds for feeding the homeless.
The cops and the unions were in the hands of the mafia, and this didn’t sit too well with them. When things turned ugly, coppers started swinging sticks and the down-and-outers started swinging back. One particularly stick-happy bluecoat was looking to take a crack at Ledoux’s head. I figured the guy wasn’t looking for trouble, just wanted to help vets with empty pockets and empty bellies, so I put myself between him and Ledoux. When my fellow flatfoot didn’t see reason, I cracked him in the jaw hard enough to put him down for a nap. Zero thanked me for my help. Since then and we’ve been friends and I volunteer at Zero’s shelters a couple of times a month. I guess I hit the officer hard enough to rattle his marbles, because when he came to he didn’t remember who slugged him. Lucky for me.
It’s guys like Zero and places like the Bowery Mission that give me some glimmer of hope that God hasn’t completely turned his back on the south side of Manhattan. Today, though, I’m not ladling out soup for Zero, I’m looking for the ex-girlfriend of my client’s missing brother. The last known address for Gabriella Rosario is a run-down set of row houses near the north end of the Bowery.
Strolling down the block toward my destination, I pass a string of bums lining the streets. Some are scrounging the gutters for a smoke with enough life left in it for a puff or two. Others are panhandling for dimes, which will get them a meal at any number of cheap eateries around here. The lucky ones will scrounge up an extra quarter and land a bed inside for the night at one of the flop houses. In the winter, those warm beds are a life saver, but now with April starting to warm things up, there are almost as many on church steps as there are in beds anywhere. The steps are cold and hard, but they’re free.
I see one vet not much older than me holding a misspelled cardboard sign that says HELP A DISABULD VET. I kneel down beside him, reaching out to shake his right hand while placing my left on his shoulder.
“Hanging in there, brother?” He eyes me suspiciously.
“You a priest?”
“No, but I’ll gladly pray for you if you let me.”
“Can’t hurt. Not sure it can help much either.” I whisper a quick Our Father over him.
“You never know; God might turn things around for you soon enough. I was there too, and He brought me out of it right enough.”
The man shoots me a sidewise glance. “You were a grunt?”
“Lafayette Flying Corps.”
“Ah, you were takin’ in the scenery while we was suckin’ up gas in the trenches. Guess the view was better from where you was sittin’.”
“No good view of that war, friend. Take care of yourself.”
I withdraw my right hand but leave behind the folded fin I had tucked there. I drew back and made the sign of the cross, then put my index finger to my lips to quell any thanks that might draw a crowd of homeless looking for more. The man gives me a wink and deftly palms and pockets the bill.
Five bucks isn’t going to turn his life around, but it may get him a few warm beds and a meal or two. Likely as not it will buy more booze than beds, but that’s out of my hands. I’m not more than a couple cases ahead of being homeless myself, but Jimmy and Rose would have me move into their living room, or into two-year-old Peter’s nursery before they’d see me wind up in the Bowery. That’s the good thing about family, and O’Briens always look after their own.
I double-check the address as I mosey up to the faded orange row house. Something ain’t right with this picture. A brand, spanking new Buick Model 57 is sitting out front of Rosario’s place. The license plates on this jalopy catch my eye: 4S 19 00. It’s interesting because that’s my birthday, 4 September, 1900. The car is even more interesting though, because one can hardly find anyone with a new pair of shoes in this neighborhood, much less a brand new car. If this is still Rosario’s place, she’s made a better class of friends than Tommy DeLanz. I knock on the door and an attractive Hispanic dame answers.
“Yes? What do you want?” she says in a voice with only a trace of an accent.
“Miss Rosario?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Name’s O’Brien. I’m a detective.” I flash my ID. “I have a few questions for you about Tommy DeLanz. It should only take a second.”
“I haven’t seen Tommy in two years. I can’t help you.” She starts to close the door in my face.
I can see we are going to do this one the hard way.
I put my foot in the door and give it a quick shove with my shoulder, which pushes her back into the house and opens the door plenty wide for me to step into the doorway.
“You see, Miss Rosario,” I explain as she looks to be gearing up for a fiery tirade, “my questions are more about you than Tommy, so why don’t we step inside, have a seat, and we will find out how much you can help, all right?”
After a string of Spanish that I am certain contains information about my parents I am probably better off not knowing, she spins around and stomps off toward the tiny living room. I shut the door behind me and follow.
“I don’t know who you think you are forcing your way into my house, but I want your badge number. I have friends who will make sure you get busted back to uniform and wind up with the worst beat in the city.”
“I’m certain that would be very intimidating, Miss Rosario, but I’m not that kind of detective. I’m a private investigator, hired to find your ex-boyfriend Tommy DeLanz. I suppose one of those friends you mentioned owns that shiny new Buick outside? That’s an awfully big car for just you. One of your friends wouldn’t be here now by chance, would they?”
Ah, it’s always the eyes that give them away. They can lie with their lips, and the better ones can even keep a straight face doing it. But the eyes always rat them out.
“That’s my car,” she answers with a hint of shakiness in her voice.
I hit a nerve.
“And my friends are none of your business. I told you already I haven’t seen Tommy in two years, and you are not a real cop so I don’t have to talk to you. You can show yourself to the door.”
Time to see if she wants to keep her friends, and where that car came from, quiet badly enough to start talking about Tommy.
“Well, I guess I better call my friends at the precinct and have them run those plates on that car, just to be sure it is yours. Lots of crime in this neighborhood, you know.”
“Look, vato,” she says, raising her voice and wagging a finger in my face, “ask me whatever you want about Tommy, but you stay out of my business, okay?”
Works every time.
“You are one of the last people Tommy was known to be regularly friendly with, so I was hoping when he came back into town recently, he might have looked you up.”
“Tommy’s back?” The hitch in her voice tells me she didn’t know. “Figures, but I already told you I haven’t seen him, and I don’t want to.”
“Really? Your history seems to say you two were pretty tight. So why’d you stop seeing Tommy?”
She drops her eyes and a calm sadness enters her voice.
“I loved Tommy. I did. But he kept getting in with dangerous people, and more dangerous business. The police kept coming over and asking me all about what Tommy was up to. I didn’t know, but if the police were asking, it wasn’t good. Then one day I find a gun in Tommy’s coat. I hate guns. Tommy knows that. My papa shot himself right there in our house. I told Tommy I wouldn’t have a gun in my house and that if he didn’t get rid of it we were through. He got mad and walked out. That was two years ago, and I haven’t seen or hear
d from him since.”
The tears rolling down her cheeks say she is likely being straight with me about this, but there is still something more she isn’t giving up. If Tommy five-finger-discounted something valuable, it might explain the new ride outside. Those kinds of tears are hard to fake, though, so while I think there is more to the story than she is spilling, I doubt the missing chapters have anything to do with Tommy.
“All right, Miss Rosario. I didn’t mean to upset you. Thank you for your time. Here’s my card. If you do hear from Tommy, give me a call. His family is worried about him.”
“Family? Tommy don’t have no family, not that he ever told me about anyway.”
Why doesn’t that surprise me?
“Yeah, it seems Tommy did a good bit of that not telling, about a lot of things. Anyway, call me if you hear from him.”
I make my way out the door and take a stroll down Bowery toward the subway station. I can’t help but feel that this investigation is turning up more questions than answers. I got a client that gets the jitters every time I ask too many questions about the brother she hired me to find. I got an ex-girlfriend with a suspiciously expensive vehicle living in a skid-row rowhouse. That same girlfriend says our missing boy hasn’t got a sister. On top of that, our disappearing relative seems to be a sticky-fingered low-rent mobster with a history of getting caught but not convicted.
I might truly need to run those plates, but that would involve calling in a favor, which are in short supply lately. That plate number I won’t forget, but for now I’m not sure DeLanz would be stupid enough to register a car in his name, even if he was behind it. If it came up under Rosario’s name, I will have burned a favor for nothing.
Seems to me I may need to lean on my client a bit and see if I can squeeze a little more truth out of her before I start burning my handful of remaining favors with the department. As for Miss Rosario, I’m going to have to let that one percolate for a while, until I can put something a little more concrete together about that new car angle. Neither of these is going to do much to land me any closer to turning up Tommy.
If his straight friends don’t know where he might be, maybe it’s time to roust a few of his crooked chums. While I know a lot of crooks in this town, there ain’t too many of them anxious to talk to a shamus, private or no. Fortunately, I do have eyes, ears, and a mouth that can get me into this city’s black underbelly, but that means a trip to Harlem and the Cotton Club.
If Tommy was hired to do something big, maybe he got a little greedy and decided to scoot with the loot. That gives me a couple of ideas about where he might have disappeared. If he’s on the run from the families, he’s going to be a thousand miles from here by now. If he got caught trying the double-cross, then there are probably a thousand pieces of him less than a mile from here. Either way the best chance for leads on where to go next is going to be with my cousin Liam.
Chapter Four – The Cotton Club
The Cotton Club is Owney Madden’s place. Well, that the real of it at least. The face of it is that the boxer, Jack Johnson, the first Negro heavyweight champion, opened the club in 1920. He sold it to Madden three years later. Since then Madden has kept Johnson on as the official manager of the club. Johnson seems to like being unique, and colored club owners are almost as rare as colored heavyweight champions.
Madden is a British-born bootlegger and mobster who operates outside the five families. He and his lieutenant, Big Frenchy DeMange, run their Number 1 Beer out of the club despite prohibition. Since last month, they are finally operating above board with it. While Jack is the inside man, Frenchy makes sure the strict “whites only” policy of the club is enforced, excepting Jack and the entertainers, of course.
“Hiya, Frenchy. How’s business?”
The towering Frenchman’s usual scowl greets me. “Well if it ain’t Nick the Mick. You snoopin’ or drinkin’?” He punctuates the question with a finger in my chest, letting me know in no uncertain terms my detective activities are as welcome as colored customers.
“A little dry this evening, Frenchy,” I say, flashing him my best winning smile. “Heard Cab’s got a few new numbers worth a listen.”
“Yeah, well, you be sure and watch yourself. Go stickin’ that Mick sniffer in places it don’t belong, you might wind up sniffing daisies from the underside, get me?”
“You’re a regular poet, Frenchy. No worries here, you know the Irish are going to be wherever the booze is, right?”
A snort is all the answer I get. Frenchy likes to talk tough. He has a reputation to maintain after all. Truth be told, for a gangster he is straighter than most. At least you know where Frenchy stands. He’s an open book. I prefer mobsters that I can see coming. It’s those back-room spiders weaving their webs that I can’t stand. Give me a stand-up fight over a knife in the back any day.
I slip into the Cotton Club and there at the front is Jack Johnson. Title or not, that is one tough bird. The guy is like fifty-five now, and I wouldn’t take him on with a lead pipe and three friends. He’s a lot more cordial than Frenchy on the outside, but if I had to pick one of them to be hacked off at me, I’d pick Frenchy every time.
“Hiya, Jack. Good crowd this evening.”
“Yes sir, Nicky. Good crowd. You want a table in the corner like usual?”
“That’d be keen, Jack. Listen, is my cousin around tonight?”
“Yes sir. Mr. Liam is in the back. You want I should send him to your table?”
“That’d be swell, Jack. Just swell.”
I take my place at a corner table, in the shadows and out of the crowd. Cab Calloway’s band is wailing and it looks like they got a few new floor acts since I was last here. An all-white club with all-colored entertainment is part of the reputation of the Cotton Club. The entertainers can’t even drink here. They got their own place down in the basement at 646 Lennox. Funny, whites are allowed to drink in there. I never brooked much with Madden’s racist policies. The Bible says God created all of us, and we all go back to Adam and Eve. Not sure how that got lost along the way, but with everything else that’s gone astray in this world, I figure that’s just a part of the package.
Still, if I want dirt, I gotta go to the garden. My cousin Liam works security here at the Cotton Club. He keeps his nose clean of the big stuff, but his work here gives me a finger on the pulse of the mob scene without having to get my hands too dirty.
“Hey there, Ace!”
I hate it when he calls me that. Being a flyer in the war was the biggest news that ever hit my family, and a few of the younger ones like Liam like to make a big deal out of it. Truth was I was one kill short of making ace, but that don’t seem to stop him from talking it up anyway.
“Hiya, Lee. How’s tricks?”
“Eh, can’t complain. So, hero, you come to hang out with the high brows for a change, or you just snoopin’ like usual?”
This kid is gonna get me plugged one day.
“Keep it down, kid. You want Frenchy up here wringing me out like a dish towel?”
“Sorry, Ace. Just glad to see you is all. It’s been a while.”
“Yeah, well you know, I start hanging out at connected joints too much, my old pals on the force are going to think I’ve come over or something.”
“Probably right there. Jack said you wanted to see me. What can I do for you?”
I lower my voice and give Liam the nod. He sits at the table and leans in so we can talk below the music of Cab Calloway blaring through the club.
“You ever hear of a sticky-fingers name of Tommy DeLanz? Word is he does some jobs for the families sometimes and they keep him out of trouble.”
Liam scratches his head and flashes that puzzled look that says I’ve struck a dry well.
“Nah, Ace, name don’t ring no bells. Small time lifters are a dime a dozen though, so unless they are doing somethin’ big or somethin’ special, ain’t likely the bosses would be flappin’ gums about ‘em.”
“Yeah, I figured, but I
had to ask. Nevertheless, let’s say a fingers-for-hire lifts something big, something real choice. Where would he go to change that special something into fast cash?”
A light flickers in Liam’s eyes.
“Eh, depends on what that somethin’ is. If it’s cash that needs washin’, there’s a cleaner that runs a Building and Loan on the upper east side.”
“Nah, I don’t think it was a bank job. Not this guy’s style. DeLanz seems to be more of a rare goods guy, paintings, jewelry, stuff like that.”
“Aah, well the artsy-fartsy stuff is gonna go to McMannis & Flint. They got an auction house on the north end of Morningside Heights, on 125th Street. For stones and jewelry, that’d be Galitz Jewelry Exchange, not far from here, just down 129th near Fifth Avenue. Hey, you don’t think this has anythin’ to do with Boston, do ya?”
Time for my eyes to light up.
“Boston? What about Boston, kid?”
“Well, chatter is the families are real nervous on accounta a big-name button man is in town. Nobody knows what he’s doin’ here, but they figure it ain’t good and might spell some trouble ‘cause the big Boston Jew-boss, Solomon, got whacked a few months back. Nobody told the families this dropper was comin’ to town, and he works for the Jewish mobsters that took over for Solomon.”
This just keeps getting better and better. Alligators I tell you, alligators.
“So what’s this hatchet-man’s name? Did you catch that?” Liam grins, proud as a peacock.
“Yeah, name’s Danny Lupo. Word is he is big-time scary.” Liam’s grin turns to frown as he wags his finger at me. “You better stay away from that one, Ace.”
“You know me, Lee, always in when I should be out.” I pat Liam on the arm, doing my best to reassure him I am not in over my head, when I’m not at all convinced of that myself. “I appreciate you slipping me the skinny, though. Don’t worry about me, kid. This bird’s tougher than he looks.”
The Woman In Blue (Nick O'Brien Case Files) Page 3