“Yeah,” Mocca said. He chewed the end off his own cigar, definitely not a Havana, and spit it on the floor. “No offense, Big Boy—you and me go way back . . . but look at the way you got Tracy all hot and bothered. That’s all we need, is that guy throwin’ the book out the window.”
Big Boy frowned.
“I hear the bigshot flatfoot’s in trouble with City Hall,” Texie Garcia said, lighting up a cigarette in a long holder. “I think maybe he’ll take himself out of the game.”
“Don’t worry about Tracy,” Big Boy said. He smiled enigmatically. “I got him covered.”
The door behind him opened and Big Boy glanced back and saw Flattop enter; Flattop frowned and shook his head, no, at his boss. He was conveying, silently, the news that the hit on Tracy tonight had failed.
Big Boy didn’t let his disappointment show. He smiled at the group and said, “Look—leave the copper to me. I’ll take care of him. I’ll either buy him, or kill him.”
“Buy Tracy?” Spaldoni asked. “Are you kidding?”
“Nobody’d like to see Tracy dead more than me,” Pruneface said. “But killing another cop right now would be plenty dangerous, in a lot of ways.”
“And Big Boy, you’d be the prime suspect,” Mocca pointed out.
Big Boy tried to keep his impatience in check, but was not entirely successful. “Leave it to me,” he said. “Just leave it to me, all right? Now. Let’s deal with our other problems. Our mutual problems.”
“My problem,” Spaldoni said sardonically, “is everybody at this table has tried to kill me, at one time or another. That’s a problem I have real trouble gettin’ around.”
“Hey,” Big Boy said, and gestured with the huge cigar, “I could say the same thing. Pruneface, you tossed a fire bomb in my car one night, and gave me this . . .”
Big Boy yanked his collar down and revealed a nasty red scar.
Pruneface swallowed thickly and loosened his own collar with a finger.
“But I forgive ya,” Big Boy said, straightening himself. His smile was tight, pulled back over his upper teeth. “And Mocca—when we had that little failin’ out, you put three slugs into me.”
“But you lived,” Mocca uneasily pointed out.
Big Boy shrugged. “Yeah, and so did you. Live and let live. After all, I owe all you guys somethin’ . . . even you, Texie, even you. That night you had your girl Daisy try to slip that shiv into me?”
“That was her idea, Big Boy,” Texie said nervously.
“I guess we’ll never know,” Big Boy said philosophically. “Funny how easy a neck can snap. But, boys and girls—let us face it. I owe you all somethin’ for some past indiscretion. But I forgive you all—’cause the past, well . . . it’s the past.”
“You want a city-wide truce, then,” Spaldoni said.
“No! I want a city-wide syndicate! And then I want to hook up with the mobs out East, and out West. I want to go national, and I want to take all of you with me.”
They began to shift in their seats, interested. All but Spaldoni, who sat smirking skeptically.
“Okay, we talked about the past,” Big Boy said, patting the air. “Fine. Now let’s talk about the future. A boss who can’t see the future is no use to nobody.”
“So you’re psychic, now,” Spaldoni cracked. He reached into his pocket.
Everyone half rose, started for their guns; the bodyguards along the walls sprang to attention. World War Two almost broke out before Spaldoni, smiling one-sidedly, chuckling, withdrew his cigarettes and lit one up.
“What’s wrong, fellas?” Spaldoni said, in a singsongy voice. “Nervous?”
“What do you mean you can see the ‘future?’ ” Pruneface asked Big Boy.
“Let me put it this way,” Big Boy said, the cigar tilting upward, his hands on the blood-red wood. “I am the future.”
Uneasy expressions were exchanged among the gangsters.
“And so,” Big Boy said, placating them, “are all of you—if you’re smart enough to come along. Wise enough to put the past in the past, and consolidate.”
More glances were exchanged, but now some heads were nodding, and there were a few intrigued shrugs.
“With Prohibition past, we got a choice,” Big Boy said. “We can fight amongst ourselves—”
“Survival of the fittest,” Spaldoni interrupted.
Big Boy nodded. “Or we throw in together and start exploring new avenues of income.”
“Such as?”
“Unions. Then we get a piece of everybody’s action. It’s no different than your protection racket, Ribs—same principle. First thing we do is control the bartenders’ union, then the other restaurant unions—waiters, chefs. Entertainment unions, too, anything involving musicians working in nightclubs. We invest in the food business, in hotel and restaurant operations, cocktail lounges, saloons, retail liquor stores, all over the country. We put our money in legal enterprises, but the kind of enterprises we understand. We give the people what they want, whether it’s a steak and a highball, or a girl and a game of chance.”
“Are you nuts?” Spaldoni asked.
“No,” Big Boy said quietly, “I am not nuts.”
“Well, I think you are. Bartenders’ union? That’s your bright idea of where dough can be made?”
“If the bartenders are in our pocket,” Big Boy said, “then they’ll push our brands of liquor. They’ll push our brands of soft drink. They will get their pretzels from us. They will get their potato chips from us.”
“Pretzels,” Spaldoni said, laughing, “potato chips.”
Acey-Deucey Doucet said thoughtfully, “Spaldoni, Big Boy’s talkin’ about a lot of pretzels. If we controlled every hotel, restaurant, cocktail lounge, and private club in these forty-eight states . . .”
“Then,” Big Boy said, gesturing with his cigar, “we’ll soon see the day we make a profit offa every olive in every martini served up in this fine drinkin’ man’s country of ours.”
Ramm nodded at Doucet, and Doucet nodded back.
“I got a vision,” Big Boy said. “A big boss has got to have a big vision.” He painted the picture in the air with his cigar-in-hand. “In a town like this, a country like ours, you got thousands of small stores and businesses . . . people working real hard. I think they should be workin’ hard for us. Every time a citizen buys a pound of hamburger, we’ll get a nickel. Every time some guy gets a haircut, we’ll get a dime. All by controlling unions. In the meantime, we’ll join the Rotary Club. The Chamber of Commerce. We’ll dress like bankers.”
Pruneface looked at Texie Garcia who smiled and nodded; then Pruneface nodded back.
“We gotta stop this small-time thinking,” Big Boy said, frowning. “We gotta stop thinking about truces and peace treaties. We gotta stop thinking who has what territory. We don’t divvy up the town. We throw in with each other! We consolidate; we’re one company, where everybody’s got his position. One of us runs gambling in town. One of us runs prostitution. Another the protection racket. Another narcotics—I see a real future there. And so on. And we come together for planning sessions, for expansion efforts, like the board of directors of a bigtime corporation.”
“And you’re chairman of the board, I suppose?” Spaldoni asked.
“That’s right.” Big Boy glanced back at Flattop and narrowed his eyes and Flattop nodded and went out. Big Boy returned his gaze to his guests. “Together, we’ll own this town. And one day, the nation. What do you say, gentlemen? And lady?”
“I’m in,” Pruneface said.
“Me, too,” Texie Garcia said, nodding.
“And me,” Doucet said.
Ramm, Mocca, and several others spoke up affirmatively as well.
“Count me out,” Spaldoni said, and rose.
“It only works,” Big Boy said gravely, “if we’re all in.”
“Tough,” Spaldoni said. He pointed at himself with a thumb. “I got a good business. I ain’t interested in going national, or incorporat
in’. I’ll take my chances all by my lonesome.”
“It’s a free country,” Big Boy said, and shrugged. “No hard feelings.”
“To hell with you, Caprice,” Spaldoni said, and he went quickly out, and his pair of bodyguards followed, their eyes not leaving the faces in the room behind them.
Then the door was closed.
“Now what?” Pruneface asked.
“Aw, Spud’s always flyin’ off the handle,” Big Boy said magnanimously. “He’ll come back down to earth. Sit down, sit down, everybody. Now the reopening of the Club Ritz, gentlemen, lady, is tomorrow night, and you’re all invited. I pick up the tab . . .”
The city’s first major underworld peace conference had an uninvited audience.
Just outside the window, on the narrow ledge, Tracy had positioned himself to eavesdrop. He’d come down the fire escape, on the alley side, stepped out onto the ledge and edged gingerly over, his fingers gripping bricks. The cold night wind was whipping his yellow topcoat and threatening to take his hat. But the trickiest part was going around the corner of the building; that was awkward, and scary, and Tracy had just enough vertigo to know not to look down.
He’d followed Breathless to the club, determining to his satisfaction that she’d not been followed—other than by him—and she was apparently in no immediate danger. While she went inside to rehearse, Tracy noticed the parade of limos bearing gangsters.
From his car he’d called Catchem on the two-way. “Every top hood in town has pulled up in front of Big Boy’s club,” he told Catchem. “There’s more limos on the street than a millionaire’s funeral.”
“The club doesn’t open till tomorrow,” Catchem’s voice said.
“That’s right,” Tracy said, “but so far, I’ve spotted Johnny Ramm, Spud Spaldoni, Texie Garcia, Joey DeSanto, Pruneface, Chuck ‘the Clipper’ Brown, Acey-Deucey, Ribs Mocca and . . . do I have to go on?”
“Ye gods,” Catchem said. “Sounds like an underworld summit conference!”
“With Big Boy convening,” Tracy said. “You and Pat better get over here.”
“Right away,” Catchem said.
Tracy had parked his car on a side street and found his way to a hallway in the apartment building across from the Club Ritz. He was studying the conference-room window through binoculars when Patton, en route, checked in by two-way.
“Can we bust these babies, Dick?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Tracy said. “No outstanding warrants on any of ’em . . .”
“What about a conspiracy rap?”
“What exactly are they conspiring to do?” Tracy said into the two-way.
Patton’s sigh was audible over the tiny cloth-covered speaker. “Wish I was a fly on their wall.”
Tracy lowered the binoculars, grinned to himself, said, “Good idea,” and was on the move, even as Patton’s voice was saying, “Huh?” from Tracy’s wrist.
Now he’d maneuvered to the window and wasn’t sure the effort, and the risk, had been worth it. All he could hear were muffled voices. He was just at the edge of the window, where he could peek in, but not really see well, nor chance taking a better look. A bodyguard had his back partially to that window, and other bodyguards lined the wall facing the window.
Tracy had come to eavesdrop, and for his trouble was getting a little night air. A little cold night air. A little cold windy night air . . .
He couldn’t stay here long. Though there was no doorman manning the entrance below—the club was closed, after all—the beat cop might come along any minute; and while it was late, and the street seemed largely deserted, someone driving by still might spot him.
“Sam,” Tracy whispered into his two-way, “afraid I’ve struck out. The glass on this window is thicker than a ham sandwich. Must be bulletproof.”
“Tracy,” Catchem’s voice said from the two-way, “we’re parked down below—over to your left. Have you fallen off your trolley? Get down from there!”
Catchem was right; this was pointless: he couldn’t hear a thing up here.
“Pull the car up under the street light,” Tracy told Catchem.
Tracy edged back around the corner of the building, out of sight; he glanced down and saw Flattop walking from the street into the alley just below him. The gunman went in a side door. Funny, Tracy thought; he hadn’t seen the flatheaded hood leave in the first place.
Out front, Spaldoni and his two bodyguards were laughing and talking as they got into their car. Tracy could see them clearly, but couldn’t make out anything they were saying specifically.
Then, a few moments after all three were within the car, the driver hit the starter switch.
And the car exploded in a fiery ball.
The blossom of orange made the night briefly day, the shock of it almost making Tracy lose his balance and tumble off his perch.
The car almost completely disintegrated and the three men within it were blown in the air like rag dolls; they came down the same way. The car itself was little more than thick charcoal smoke, a gnarl of steel and four very flat tires. A horrid, pungent smell wafted up to the detective.
Around the corner from him, the window he’d tried to listen at suddenly slid open.
And Big Boy leaned out.
“See?” he said, apparently to his audience within. “I told ya Spaldoni would come back down to earth.”
Big Boy disappeared, and Flattop shut the window.
Still around the corner, on the ledge in the alley, Tracy whispered into the two-way. “You there, Sam?”
“I’m here.” Catchem’s voice seemed uncharacteristically shaken. “I take it, that you heard?”
“I sure did.”
“I called it in. We got a pretty good view of that room with binoculars now. You better get outta there . . . the place is emptying out.”
“Get ready to pull the car over.”
Tracy turned and made a jump to the light pole and slid down, like a fireman answering a call. He leaped to a parked car and, just as Catchem with Patton pulled up in an unmarked sedan, Tracy hopped aboard, clinging to the roof of the car as it sped away down the street.
Tracy did not see the menacing figure in an oversized coat and slouch hat watching his flashy departure. Had he seen the man, Tracy would surely have been struck by his face.
That is, his lack of a face.
A patch of sunlight fell from the bedroom window onto the Kid’s face as he lay sleeping snugly beneath the covers. The light gradually nagged his eyelids open, and then he sat up with a start, not sure where he was.
Looking around, he realized he was in a bedroom, Tracy’s bedroom; in a bed, Tracy’s bed. On the nightstand was a small, round clock, which showed the time as a little before seven. The boy stretched, then climbed out.
He looked down at himself and made a face. He was wearing red pajamas; the idea of wearing special clothes to bed seemed pointless and even silly to him. But Miss Tess had bought these, among other clothes, for him. She’d even bought him a little suitcase, which he noticed was over in the corner, next to a dresser.
On that dresser was a picture of Miss Tess, smiling, looking real pretty in a summery dress; and a picture of a white-haired man with glasses and a strong jaw, who the Kid figured was Tracy’s pa, with his arm around an older lady who had a real nice smile, who the Kid figured was Tracy’s ma. In front of the framed pictures was the baseball and glove Tracy gave him yesterday. That Tracy sure was jake.
Also on the dresser was a wallet.
The Kid looked in the worn leather billfold. There was fifteen bucks in there. And some more pictures, several of Tess, and those same old people that he figured for Tracy’s parents. Also, pinned to the leather was a shiny silver detective’s badge. It said “Chief of Detectives” on it.
He caught his own reflection in the dresser mirror as he held the wallet in his hands; his face looked white, his hair was sticking out every which way, and his eyes looked real ashamed, as if he’d caught himself at someth
ing.
He swallowed and put the wallet back on the dresser.
“Are you up?” Tracy called from the other room.
The Kid went out into the little living room. For a guy with a decent job, Tracy sure didn’t live fancy; just two rooms and a kitchenette and a can. Of course, the place was nicer than the Kid was used to, by a long shot—but he’d seen fancier digs. Like when he and Steve went around to sell their stuff to certain fences, for instance.
Tracy was in the bathroom brushing his teeth. He was wearing a T-shirt. He had muscular arms and wide shoulders; the Kid wouldn’t mind a build like that himself someday.
“What are you doing?” the Kid asked, standing just outside the bathroom.
“What do you mean, what am I doing?” Tracy asked, turning to the Kid. Tracy’s mouth was foamy white.
The Kid laughed. “Don’t bite me or nothin’.”
Tracy laughed back. “Look like a mad dog, do I? Well, you ought to try this stuff. Doesn’t taste so bad—peppermint.” He lifted his toothbrush from under the running tap water. “I don’t have a spare brush, so just sprinkle some in your hand and rub it on your teeth with your fingers.”
He handed the Kid a tin of tooth powder.
“Do I have to?”
“Just wash your mouth out with water after.”
The Kid was looking at the tin of tooth powder with distrust. “You know, Tracy—for a tough guy, you sure do a lot of pansy things.”
“Is that right? Your pal Steve—how are his teeth?”
“He don’t have too many. They’re pretty black.”
Tracy shrugged. He began working his shaving brush in its mug. “That’s where you’re headed, if you don’t use that stuff.”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Your decision. I’m not your father.”
The Kid made a face and sprinkled some of the tooth powder on his fingers.
Tracy glanced at the boy. His face was kind. “You want some breakfast? I scramble a mean egg.”
“Sure! Is that coffee I smell?”
Tracy was lathering his face up. “That’s for me, junior. Milk?”
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