by Tom Bradby
‘That’s it?’ Caprisi asked.
Quinn walked still faster.
Their footsteps echoed down the long corridor in the basement. The building seemed unnaturally quiet so early in the day.
Doc Carter was humming to himself. He was bent over Moe Diamond’s body with a saw in one hand and a scalpel in the other.
‘Happy in your work, Doc?’
‘Very funny, Detective.’ Carter straightened up. ‘You know, I’ve started to enjoy our encounters, which probably isn’t healthy for either of us.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘You can probably guess.’
‘How far have you got?’
‘Not far.’
‘You want to tell me what you’ve found?’
‘You’ll have to wait for my report.’
‘C’mon, Doc,’ Quinn said. ‘I can see you already have something you’re bursting to tell me. There were two killers this time, right? Two different knives?’
‘Very clever, Detective.’ Carter put down his tools. ‘How did you know?’
‘Moe and Dick were nervous as hell. One guy couldn’t have taken them on.’
Carter moved to the sink and washed his hands. He picked up a towel. ‘Permit me to observe that you’re sometimes a little too clever for your own good.’
‘What else have you observed?’
‘Nothing. That’s it, as you suggest. Two different knives. The larger one was used to kill Moe Diamond and was thrust in hard and deep. The other was smaller. If it hadn’t pierced his heart, it might not have killed Mr Kelly.’
‘So what are you saying?’
‘I’m not saying anything. Those are the facts.’
‘It was a professional hit?’
Carter hesitated. ‘It’s not an attractive proposition, is it? For any of us …’
‘But that’s what you’re getting at.’
‘Both men were killed cleanly, Detective. The rest of it,’ he waved a hand in the air, ‘pure theatrics.’
‘Moe Diamond was already dead when they cut his tongue out?’
‘I’d say so.’
‘And the cuts to their throats are deeper than Duncan’s?’
‘Correct. I think that calls for a drink, don’t you?’
‘Doc, it’s real early.’
‘Never too early.’
Quinn moved to the window. ‘You think one of the knives could have been used on Duncan?’
‘No. The shape and trajectory of the incisions are quite different.’
‘Which means Moe and Dick were killed by somebody else?’
Carter pursed his lips. ‘Let’s just say that the man who murdered Spencer Duncan was an amateur. Both these guys have gone for a single thrust straight to the heart. They knew what they were doing. They’ve killed before. They’ll probably do so again.’
‘Maybe our friend Major La Guardia is to blame.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Oh … nothing. Thanks, Doc.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
Quinn and Caprisi stepped into the corridor. ‘What’s La Guardia got to do with this?’ Caprisi said.
‘I saw him at the fight last night. He’s trying to expose the mayor. That’s why he sent Martha to work for Moe.’
‘Moe was talking to La Guardia?’
‘I figure he was half a bottle short of talking to anyone who’d listen.’
‘So they decided to shut him up?’
‘And send a pretty clear signal to anyone with a loose tongue.’
‘Now maybe it’s your dad’s turn, Joe.’ Caprisi clutched at him. ‘When are they going to decide it’s time to shut us up, too?’
Quinn shook himself loose and started walking.
‘Please, Joe,’ Caprisi called after him. ‘This has gone far enough. We can’t go on like nothing’s happening.’
Quinn turned and saw the fear in his partner’s eyes. ‘I never asked you to come along for the ride.’
‘But I am along. So now, please, tell me you have a plan. Because otherwise I know how this is going to end.’
‘They wouldn’t risk taking us out.’
‘The hell they wouldn’t! We’re nobodies. No one outside of Centre Street even knows we exist. Risky is taking out Johnny the Bull. Hellish risky is taking out Ed McCredie. But nobody gives a damn about us.’
‘They will.’
‘And how are you going to make that happen?’
‘I’ll work something out.’
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHILE LAY ON HIS BUNK, SMOKING A CIGAR. ‘HEY! WHAT’S THE DEAL with you guys? Don’t you even give a man a drink?’
‘Shut up, Chile,’ Caprisi said.
‘Sit down,’ Quinn snapped.
Acuna perched on the edge of the bunk. His jauntiness suggested that, since their last meeting, he’d been offered reassurance.
‘You heard about Moe and Dick, Chile?’
‘What’s there to hear?’
‘They’re dead.’
‘Yeah? Says who?’
‘Says the two big knives that got stuck in their chests. Their bodies were in the back of an automobile alongside the abattoir.’
Acuna’s mouth gaped open. Clearly he didn’t think this was good news. ‘Moe’s dead?’
‘Dog meat.’
Beads of sweat sprang to Acuna’s brow.
‘The way we see it, Chile, you’re more or less the only guy in that poker game who’s still alive and kicking.’
‘I didn’t do nothing,’ he whined.
‘You all did something,’ Quinn said.
‘Who’s the big man, Chile?’ Caprisi said.
‘The Bag Man?’
Quinn frowned. ‘No, he said the big man.’
‘Jesus …’ Fear glinted in Acuna’s oily brown eyes. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Then who is the Bag Man?’
‘I don’t know. I guess I heard you wrong.’
‘This guy was cut in on your games, right? That’s why there was never any trouble.’
‘Where’s the Bull? I wanna speak to the Bull.’
‘Let’s slow down here,’ Caprisi said. ‘We’ve got to break into your game, Chile. You understand that. Someone’s killed Charlie and Spencer, Moe and Dick, so it doesn’t take a genius to know that your seat at the table isn’t too comfortable right now. Who else took a hand?’
‘We’ve been over this a hundred times already,’ Acuna squeaked. ‘I told you, Moe, Dick, Charlie and Spencer.’
‘Who else?’
‘No one else. Sometimes they’d grab a few guys who were hanging around the club. There was no one regular.’
‘What about the game at the Plaza?’
‘I told you before, I’ve never been to the Plaza in my life.’
Caprisi perched on the edge of the desk. ‘What did Moe and the guys talk about?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘You were there.’
‘The usual kind of stuff.’
‘And what was that?’
Acuna touched the ends of his inconsequential moustache. ‘Sometimes they’d pick a few stocks.’
‘What did they say about them?’
‘Hell, I don’t know. Does it matter?’
‘It matters.’
‘This was a good buy, that was a piece of shit. I didn’t take it in. I wasn’t interested.’
‘You’re a gambling man,’ Quinn said. ‘Did you and Moe talk about going up to Saratoga?’
‘I never liked the horses.’
‘Charlie Matsell only rode in from Cuba a few months ago. You talk about that?’
‘No.’
‘He got around a bit. You know why?’
‘Maybe it was while they were all away.’
Quinn took a step closer. ‘Away where?’
‘I don’t know, wherever it was.’
‘You said, while they were all away.’
‘Did I?’ Acuna squirmed.
‘Where did they g
o?’ Quinn said.
‘Search me.’
‘But they went somewhere, all at the same time. They got the hell out of the city and travelled overseas?’
‘I guess so, yeah.’
‘Why did they go away, Chile?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t know them in the old days.’
‘They were on the run?’
‘I never said that.’
‘Did they say why they went away?’
‘No.’
‘How long ago did they come back?’
‘I don’t know, man. I swear it.’
Quinn offered Acuna a cigarette. He accepted. They smoked for a moment in silence.
‘Moe was scared, Chile. His friends were dying. You figure he could have been tempted to shoot his mouth off to La Guardia?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘He was a troubled guy. Maybe he was looking to save his worthless hide or to salve his conscience. After all, you guys are hardly to blame. You’re just passengers, right? None of it was your idea. You didn’t get much of the dough from the fixes and you didn’t really want to use the broads. You couldn’t stop any of it.’ Quinn waited. ‘So who was it Moe was going to blow the whistle on? The Bag Man?’
Acuna looked as if he was about to faint.
‘We’re headed for the pre-line-up meeting,’ Quinn said. ‘You know what I’m going to nail on the board? Mr Chile Acuna says the guy at the heart of the fix is the Bag Man and he’s ready to blow the whistle on him.’
‘No!’ Acuna leapt to his feet. ‘You’re crazy! They’ll kill me!’
The Bull barged into the room. He took off his fedora and threw it on the table. He looked from Quinn to Caprisi and back again. If they’d been dog excrement on the sidewalk, he’d have accorded them more respect. O’Reilly and Hegarty lurked in the shadows behind him. ‘Detective Quinn,’ Brandon said. He motioned towards the door.
Quinn followed him into the corridor.
‘Scram, Seamus,’ Brandon instructed the duty officer. Carrigan needed no second bidding. ‘What are you doing with my witness, Quinn?’
‘He’s our witness, Johnny.’
Brandon shook his head, as if Quinn had gone stark staring mad. ‘Mr Brandon to you, Detective. And Chile Acuna is my witness.’
‘Whatever you say, Johnny. Hey, Caprisi, let’s go.’
‘Hold on a second.’ Brandon led Quinn further down the corridor, out of earshot. His deep blue, matinée-idol eyes scrutinized Quinn’s. The cuts from their fight were less evident, but still pleasingly visible. ‘What’s wrong with you, Quinn? Don’t you even want to be one of the guys?’
‘It depends what that involves.’
‘We respect each other’s work here.’
‘I heard that respect was a big thing with you, Johnny.’
‘At least your old man knew which side he was on.’
‘I’m beginning to figure that out,’ Quinn said.
‘Then be careful how you tread.’
Brandon made to leave, but Quinn stopped him. ‘Is the Mecklenburg girl now officially a homicide?’
‘Which girl?’
‘You know damned well which girl. She’s been gone more than a week, and now you’ve found the uncle, it should have been reassigned from Missing Persons to Homicide. I’d like to see the file.’
Brandon’s face was stony. ‘Talk to McCredie.’
‘The file isn’t on the shelf.’
‘That’s McCredie’s problem.’
‘You figure there’s any chance she’s still alive?’
‘What do you think, Detective?’
‘Did you find the uncle?’
‘Talk to Byrnes.’ Brandon’s face contorted with anger. ‘This is a jungle, Detective, and you need to work out real soon who are the biggest goddamn beasts.’
The Bull pivoted on his heel and they watched him go.
‘What did he want?’ Caprisi asked.
‘The name of my tailor,’ Quinn said. ‘Look, do me a favour and go find Mrs Mecklenburg. I just saw her leave the building. Maybe Mae knows where she’s headed.’
‘Why?’
‘Just bring her in here.’
‘Why, Joe?’
‘Because we’ve been real dumb. We figured it was all about this year and this poker game. We never thought about what might have happened before they ran away to Cuba.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘The Mecklenburg case has been bugging me from the start. A girl goes missing but they don’t put it out on the wire. It’s not in the newspapers. You ask yourself why?’
‘It’s a family issue.’
‘The hell it is. I’ll bet you a dime to a dollar she’s already dead and has been for a week. When Amy Mecklenburg goes missing, everyone south of Schneider wants to play it down. Hell, it’s election time. But someone knows there’s more to it than that.’ Quinn clasped his partner’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Tony. It’s been staring me in the face. We have to find the mother.’
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
YAN WAS READING THE GOLDBERG PIECE TOO. ‘DID YOU GET THE files? I couldn’t see any involving chloroform.’
Quinn gritted his teeth. ‘Yan, I made a mistake. We need to go further back.’
‘How much further?’
‘You should start with the summer of 1919.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s when you were still my father’s partner.’
Yan hesitated. ‘What am I looking for?’
‘The same thing. A missing girl, a homicide.’
He was gone a few minutes. ‘Nothing.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’
‘What do you want, Joe?’
‘I’d like to know if there was some kind of pattern that summer, maybe a sequence of young girls being abused, or going missing, or winding up at the bottom of the East River.’
‘I said, what is it you want?’
‘I’m just trying to—’
Yan’s expression had clouded. ‘Don’t fool with me, kid.’
‘Okay, Yan. I just want to know the truth about my father.’
Yan sat down heavily. ‘And what would you say if I told you that isn’t so smart?’
‘You said he had nothing to hide.’
‘We all have something to hide. You find out the truth about him and you’ll find out the truth about some others. And they won’t think twice about shutting you up.’
‘Who are we talking about?’
‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t be standing here.’
‘You do know. You know damned well.’
Yan brushed his palm to and fro across the wooden desk top.
‘Mind if I pull one of the Rothstein files?’ Quinn said.
Yan shrugged. ‘You know where they are.’
Quinn ducked under the barrier and walked down the corridor
to the rogues’ gallery. It took him a few seconds to locate the file marked ‘Rothstein/Gambling Commission/Bag Man’.
The first item was an article from the New York Times, stamped October 1913 and yellowed with age. It exposed a ‘secret gambling commission’ operating at ‘the highest level’ within the city. It detailed the yearly graft paid to the protection rackets and listed the different operations and their respective yields.
Poolrooms, 400, at $300 monthly 1,440,000
Crap games, 500, at $150 monthly 900,000
Gambling houses, 200, at $150 monthly 360,000
Gambling houses (large), 20, $1,000 a month 240,000
Swindlers, 50, at $50 a month 30,000
Policy 125,000
Total $3,095,000
According to the Times, this colossal figure had been paid to the ‘secret gambling commission’, which was composed of the head of one of the city departments, two senators, the director of the poolroom syndicate and a senior official at Police Headquarters known as the Bag Man, who was responsible for the collection and distribution of the take. Quinn got ou
t the papers he had taken from Spencer Duncan’s house.
Under the heading ‘Disbursements’ the figures were bigger, but they were broken down into smaller denominations. He decided that the top line recorded what was coming in, while the numbers running down the side related to what was going out, and to whom.
‘What are you looking for?’ Yan asked.
Quinn folded Duncan’s papers and put them back in his pocket. He returned to the file. It was packed with witness testimony about the case of Lieutenant Charles Becker, who had been executed for murder. ‘What has this got to do with Rothstein?’
‘Valentine’s first Confidential Squad put it together. They wanted to detail where Rothstein and his like came from.’ Yan took the file from him. ‘In the old days, the Bag Man was the link between the underworld and the guys sitting up at Tammany Hall. He took in the rake-offs and oversaw the distribution of the take.’
‘So who was he?’
‘Bill Devery, while he was chief. When he went, Lieutenant Becker took over. After the Times blew the whistle it was all over for the cops so Rothstein stepped into the breach. He oiled the wheels the same way the Bag Man had done. He provided political connections for the underworld strong men and kept the cash flowing into the pockets of the Tammany sachems. In theory, the cops were cut out.’
‘Only in theory?’
Yan slipped the file back onto the shelf. He took the whisky bottle from its hiding place. ‘You want a drink?’
‘Rothstein was a smokescreen. Nothing changed.’
Yan poured himself a glass. ‘You have a suspect, kid?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who is it?’
‘A cop. Or maybe someone who was once a cop.’
‘Do you have any evidence?’
‘It’s a crime, Yan. Whatever the reasons, it’s still a crime.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You do, Yan. It’s because of the Mecklenburg girl. When she went missing, you knew it had started again.’
‘Forget it, Joe.’
‘Something happened when you were working with my old man. That was when the arguments at home began and he was in the courtyard at night burning his suits. You knew what was going on. Moe and the rest of the gang had to lie low for a while, but now they’re back in business and you weren’t about to let it happen again.’