by John Shirley
She went on in that vein for a while, losing the Ryan thread. Then a zoot-suiter put a bebop number on the juke and started whooping it up; the noise drowned her out, and pretty soon she was cradling her head on the bar, snoring.
Gorland had one of those intuitions … that this was the door to something big.
His lush bartender came weaving in, and Gorland turned the place over, tossing over his apron, vowing inwardly to fire the bastard first chance. He had a grift to set up …
* * *
First thing Gorland noticed, coming into the sweat-reeking prep room for the fight, was that hangdog look on Steele’s face. Good.
Sitting on the rubdown table getting his gloves laced on by a black trainer, the scarred, barrel-chested boxer looked like his best friend had died and his old lady too. Gorland tucked a fiver into the Negro’s hand and tilted his head toward the door. “I’ll tie his gloves on for ’im, bud…”
The guy took the hint and beat it. Steele was looking Gorland up and down, his expression hinting he’d like to practice his punching right here. Only he didn’t know this was Frank Gorland, what with the disguise. Right now, the man the east side knew as “Frank Gorland” was going by …
“My name’s Lucio Fabrici,” Gorland said, tying Steele’s gloves nice and tight. “Bianchi sent me.”
“Bianchi? What for? I told him not an hour ago it was a done deal.” Steele showed no sign of doubting that he was talking to “Lucio Fabrici,” a mobster working with Bianchi.
“Fabrici” had gone to great lengths for this disguise. The pinstripe suit, the toothpick stuck in the corner of his mouth, the spats, the toupee, the thin mustache—a high quality theatrical mustache carefully stuck on with spirit gum. But mostly it was his voice, just the right Little Italy intonation, and that carefully tuned facial expression that said, We’re pals, you and I, unless I have to kill you.
Not hard for him to pull off the character, or almost any character. Running off from the orphanage, he’d taken a job as a stage boy in a vaudeville theater—stuck it out for three years though they paid him in pennies and sausages. He’d slept on a pile of ropes backstage. But it had been worth it. He’d watched the actors, the comics—even a famous Shakespearean type who played half a dozen parts in his one-man show. Young Frank had sucked it all up like a sponge. Makeup, costumes—the works. But what most impressed him was the fact that the people in the audience believed. For a few minutes they believed this laudanum-addicted Welsh actor was Hamlet. That kind of power impressed young Frank. He’d set himself to learn it …
Judging from Steele’s reaction, he’d learned it good. “Look here, Fabrici, if Bianchi’s gonna welsh on my cut … I won’t take it! This is hard enough for me!”
“You ever hear of a triple cross, kid? Bianchi’s changed his mind!” Gorland lowered his voice, glanced to make sure the door was closed. “Bianchi doesn’t want you to throw the fight … we’ve let it out you’re throwing the fight so we can bet the other way! See? You’ll get your cut off the proceeds, and double!”
Steele’s mouth hung open. He jumped to his feet, clapped his gloved hands together. “You mean it? Say, that’s swell! I’ll knock that lug’s socks off!” Someone was pounding on the door. The audience was chanting Steele’s name …
“You do that, Steele—I hear ’em calling you … Get out there and nail him early, first chance! Make it a knockout in the first round!”
Steele was delighted. “Tell Bianchi, I’ll deliver—and how! A KO, first round! Ha!”
* * *
Half an hour later Gorland was at his bookie operation in the basement of the drugstore. Gorland and Garcia, his chief bookie, were in the room behind the betting counters, talking quietly, as Morry took bets at the window. Two or three freight-ship deckhands, judging by their watch caps and tattoos, stood in line to place their bets, passing a flask and yammering.
“I dunno, boss,” Garcia said, scratching his head. Garcia was a chubby second-generation Cuban in a cheap three-piece suit, chomping a cigar that had never been anywhere near Cuba. “I get how knowing about Steele throwing the fight’ll get us paid off if we place our own bets through our guys,” Garcia was saying. “But, boss, I don’t see how you’re going to get the kinda money out of it you’re talking about…”
“’Cause he isn’t going to throw the fight. All the smart mob money’ll be on him losing—and we’ll bet on him winning. And we’ll take ’em big-time when he surprises ’em!”
Garcia blinked. “They’ll take it outta Steele’s hide, boss.”
“And how’s that my worry? Just you make sure the mob’s up to their neck betting against Steele. They’re gonna be sad little monkeys when they lose. But they won’t trace it to us. If you see Harley, tell him to keep an eye on that poker game up at the hotel, got some real big money suckers comin’ in…”
He walked over to Morry, to have a gander at the take, and heard a couple of the dockworkers talking over their flask. “Sure, Ryan’s hiring big down there. It’s a hot ticket, pal, big paydays. But problem is—real QT stuff. Can’t talk about the job. And it’s dangerous too. Somewhere out in the North Atlantic, Iceland way…”
Gorland’s ears pricked up at that.
He slipped outside by the side door and set himself to wait. Less than a minute later a couple of the deckhands came out, weather-beaten guys in watch caps and pea jackets, headed for the docks. The deck rats didn’t notice him following. They were too busy whistling at a group of girls having a smoke across the street.
He shadowed the sailors close to dockside, then hung back in the shadows of a doorway, sussing the scene out. The deckhands went aboard one of the ships—but it was another one that caught Gorland’s eye—a new freighter with a lot of activity on its decks, getting ready to cast loose. The name on the bow was The Olympian. That was one of Ryan’s ships. There was a guy in the lee of a stack of crates near the loading dock, smoking a pipe. Something about him said G-man. It wasn’t Voss—probably one of his men, if Gorland was any judge of cop flesh.
If Andrew Ryan was attracting G-men, he must be up to something of “questionable legal status.” Which meant, at the very least, he could be blackmailed—if Gorland could find out exactly what to blackmail him for.
Seemed like the agent was watching the two guys arguing at the gangplank of Ryan’s freighter—but he wasn’t close enough to listen in without them noticing.
Gorland tilted his hat so the G-man wouldn’t see his face and strolled over, hands in his pockets, weaving a bit, making like he was drunk.
“Maybe I can get me some work on one of these ships,” Gorland said, slurring his words. “Mebbe, mebbe … Back bustin’ work, they got … Don’t care for it … mebbe they need a social director…” He did a good drunk—and all three men discounted him immediately as he approached.
Gorland paused near the gangplank, muttering to himself as he pretended to struggle with lighting a cigarette. All the while, he listened to the argument between the man standing on the roped gangplank, and a mustachioed man on the dock who looked like he might be a deckhand.
“I just ain’t shipping out to that place again, and that’s all there is to it,” snarled the deckhand in the black peacoat. He wore a knit cap on his head and a handlebar mustache on his upper lip. A swarthy type, eyebrows merged in a single black bar. But getting old, maybe—skin leathery, hair salt and pepper, hand trembling as he jabbed a finger at the ship’s officer. “You ain’t going to make me go out there! Too goddamned risky!”
“Why, percentagewise, they’re losing less people than building the Brooklyn Bridge,” said the officer. “I have Mr. Greavy’s word on that. Stop being such a coward!”
“I don’t mind being on the ship—but in that hell down below, not me!”
“There’s no use trying to say you’ll only take the job if you stay on the ship—it’s what Greavy says that goes! If he says you go down, you go down!”
“Then you go down in my place—and you wrest
le with the devil! It’s unholy, what he’s tryin’ to do down there!”
“If you leave here now, matey, you don’t get paid a penny more! Get aboard this instant—we sail in ten minutes—or you can say good-bye to your contract!”
“Two weeks salary for my life? Pah!”
“You won’t die down there. We had one run of bad luck is all—”
“I say it again: Pah! Good-bye to you, Mr. Forester!”
The deckhand stalked off—and Gorland realized the ship’s officer was glaring at him with unconcealed suspicion. “You—what are you doing hanging ’round here?”
Gorland flicked his cigarette butt into the sea. He grinned drunkenly. “Just having a smoke, matey.”
He set off to follow the deckhand, wondering what he’d stumbled onto. It was like a trail of coins gleaming on a moonlit path. If he kept following the shiny little clues he’d find the moneybag they were leaking from.
Gorland knew this trail could lead him to trouble, maybe jail. But he was a restless man, unhappy if he wasn’t out on an edge. He either stayed busy working the game or lost himself in a woman’s arms. Otherwise he started thinking too much. Like about his old man dumping him in that orphanage when he was a boy.
The deckhand turned the corner of one of the loading docks to go up the access road. It was a foggy night, and there was no one else on the short side road to the avenue. No one to see …
Frank Gorland had two approaches to getting what he wanted from life. Long-term planning—and creative improvisation. He saw a possibility—a foot-long piece of one-inch-diameter metal pipe, fallen off some truck. It was just lying in the gutter, calling to him. He scooped up the piece of pipe and hurried to catch up with the slouching shape of the deckhand.
He stepped up behind the man, grabbed his collar, jerked him slightly off balance without knocking him over.
“Hey!” the man yelped.
Gorland held the deckhand firmly in place and pressed the end of the cold metal pipe to the back of his neck. “Freeze!” Gorland growled, altering his voice. He put steel and officiousness into it. “You turn around, mister, you try to run, and I’ll pull the trigger and separate your backbones with a bullet!”
The man froze. “Don’t—don’t shoot! What do you want? I don’t have but a dollar on me!”
“You think I’m some crooked dock rat? I’m a federal agent! Now don’t even twitch!”
Gorland let go of the deckhand’s collar, reached into his own coat pocket, took out his wallet, flipped it open, flashed the worthless special-officer badge he used when he needed bogus authority. He flicked it in front of the guy’s face, not letting him have a real look at it.
“You see that?” Gorland demanded.
“Yes sir!”
He put the wallet away and went on, “Now hear this, sailor: you’re in deep shit, for working on that crooked project of Ryan’s!”
“They—they told me it was legal! All legal!”
“They told you it was a secret too, right? You think it’s legal to keep secrets from Uncle Sam?”
“No—I guess not. I mean—Well I don’t know nothing about it. Just that they’re building something out there. And it’s a dangerous job, down them tunnels under the sea.”
“Tunnels? Under the sea? For what?”
“For the construction. The foundations! I don’t know why he’s doing it. None of the men do—he tells ’em only what they need to know. Only, I heard Greavy talking to one of them scientist types! All I can tell you is what I heard…”
“And that was—?”
“That Ryan is building a city under the sea down there!”
“A what!”
“Like, a colony under the goddamn ocean! And they’re laying out all kindsa stuff down there! It don’t seem possible, but he’s doing it! I heard he’s spending hunnerds of millions, might be getting into billions! He’s spending more money than any man ever spent buildin’ anything!”
Gorland’s mouth went dry as he contemplated it, and his heart thumped.
“Where is this thing?”
“Out in the North Atlantic—they keep us belowdecks when we go, so we don’t see where exactly. I ain’t even sure! Cold as death out there, it is! But he’s got the devil’s own heat coming up—steam comes up someways, and sulfur fumes, and the like! Some took sick from them fumes! Men have died down there, buildin’ that thing!”
“How do you know how much he’s spending?”
“I was carryin’ bags into Mr. Greavy’s office, on the platform ship, and I was curious, like. I hears ’em talkin’…”
“The what kind of ship?”
“That’s what they call it. Platform ship! A platform to launch their slinkers! The Olympian there, it supplies the platform ships!”
“Slinkers, that what you said?”
“Bathyspheres, they is!”
“Bathyspheres! If you’re lying to me…”
“No officer, I swear it!”
“Then get out of here! Run! And tell no one you spoke to me—or you go right to jail!”
The man went scurrying away, and Gorland was left in a state of mute amazement.
Ryan is building a city under the sea.
3
Ryan Building, New York City
1946
Ten A.M. and Bill McDonagh wanted a cigarette. He had a pack of smokes calling to him from his jacket pocket, but he held off. He was right bloody nervous about this meeting with Andrew Ryan. He was sitting literally on the edge of the padded velvet waiting-room chair outside the door of Ryan’s office trying to relax, his report on the tunnel in a big brown envelope on his lap.
Bill glanced at Elaine working diligently at her desk: a sturdy brunette in a gray-blue dress suit. She was about twenty-nine, a self-contained woman with snappy blue eyes—and that upturned nose that reminded him of his mum. But the jiggle when she shifted in her seat—that sure wasn’t like his bony old mum. He’d watched Elaine walking about the office whenever he could do it discreetly. She had slightly wide shoulders and hips, long legs. One of those leggy American women like Mary Louise, but smarter, judging from the brief contact he’d had with her. Bet she liked to dance. Maybe this time he’d get up his nerve and ask her …
Bill made himself sit back in the seat, suddenly feeling weary—he was still knackered from staying up past midnight supervising the night crew in the tunnel. But he was glad for the work—he was making far more money than he’d ever made before. He’d moved up to a nicer flat on the west side of Manhattan after his first month working for Ryan, and he was thinking of buying a car. The work was sometimes like plumbing writ large. But the gigantic pipes in the tunnel project weighed tons.
Maybe he should talk to Elaine. Ryan didn’t respect a man without enterprise. Didn’t matter what the enterprise was in.
Bill cleared his throat. “Slow day, innit, Elaine?”
“Hm?” She looked up as if surprised he was there. “Oh—yes, it has been a bit slow.” She looked at him, blushed again, bit her lip, and looked back at her paperwork.
He was encouraged. If a woman blushed looking at you that was a good sign. “Things are slow, got to make ’em brisker, I always say. And what’s brisker than the jitterbug?”
She looked at him innocently. “Jitterbug?”
“Yeah. Fancy a jitterbug sometime?”
“You mean—you’d like to go dancing…?” She glanced at the door to Ryan’s inner office, and lowered her voice. “Well, I might … I mean, if Mr. Ryan doesn’t … I’m not sure how he feels about employees who…”
“Employees who cut a rug?” Bill grinned. “All quite ’armless…” He cleared his throat again. “Harmless.”
“Ah Bill, you’re here—!”Andrew Ryan was at the door to the inner office. He seemed cheerful, almost ebullient.
“Right you are, sir,” Bill mumbled. He got up, trying to catch Elaine’s eye as he went. She was studiously back at work.
“I expect you’ve brought the report,”
Ryan said, looking at Bill’s manila envelope. “Good man. But I already know how it’s going. Tell you what: let’s skip the office meeting. You and I, Bill, if you are up for it, are going on a trip. Couple of stops. One in town, and one—far beyond town … we’ll talk about it on the way…”
* * *
It was Bill’s first ride in a limousine. A smooth, quiet ride, a world away from the traffic outside. But Bill felt out of his social depth.
He’d only had a few meetings with Ryan since being hired. He’d been working mostly with contractors, and sometimes with Greavy when the engineer was back from the North Atlantic. Only it had seemed to Bill like Greavy came out to the site mostly to watch him. Like the boffin was trying to guess his weight. One time Greavy had brought a couple of bearded, scowling Irishmen in fancy suits to look him over—brothers by the name of Daniel and Simon Wales. Greavy never did bother to explain what that was about.
“When you get a chance to take a dekko at the figures, sir,” Bill said, “you’ll see we’re caught up on the schedule and just about done—”
Ryan held up a hand to stop him. But he was smiling—faintly. “I’m not surprised that you’re almost finished, Bill. In fact the crew can finish without you, at this point. That’s why I hired you—I knew that you’d do a good job. Greavy was testing you on this tunnel assignment. But I had you figured right all along. There’s something else I need to know. Something far more important, Bill.”
“Yes sir?” Bill waited, fascinated by the electric charge of sheer certainty that seemed to shimmer around Andrew Ryan.
Ryan looked at him seriously. “I need to know if you’re ready to meet the greatest challenge of your life.”