Hector hauled his man out and then pushed him down onto his knees and stepped back, cocking his vintage Peacemaker on the draw.
As the man clutched between his legs, trying to catch his breath, Hector took the man’s gun and dropped it into his own overcoat’s pocket.
While the man was still incapacitated, Hector felt around and then tugged the man’s wallet from his right hip pocket. Hector flipped through cellophane panels and found the man’s driver’s license: Lawrence Burrachi.
Jimmy held up his man’s wallet and said, “One Thomas Pinelli.” He tossed the wallet onto the chest of the unconscious man. Jimmy thrust his man’s liberated gun behind his waistband. “More weapons for our armory,” Jimmy said. “We’re amassing quite the arsenal, eh?”
Hector said, “Okay, Larry, be a man and stop milking it. What I did to you wasn’t as bad as being kicked down there. And it’s a hell of a lot more benign than being shot in the plumbing, which is where I mean to put my first.” Then Hector pointed his Peacemaker. “How’d you get onto us?”
Larry spit at Hector’s boot. This time Hector kicked him between the legs. It took the man a while to catch his breath from that assault. Hector pointed his gun between the man’s legs again. He said, “You surely aren’t stupid enough to try for the trifecta, are you Larry? You really think I’m a bluffer after that kick?”
Wincing, the thug—Larry—looked at his unconscious comrade.
“Tom” looked much the worse for wear. Tom’s skin was livid red and heat blisters were forming on his face now. Going straight from scalding water to rolling in the snow and slush wasn’t going to help with any of that.
Larry said, “The clerk at the store where you shopped called you in when Mrs. Scartelli paid on credit for the stuff. We were in the neighborhood and dispatched to meet you. We followed you from the store to this joint.”
“Just like we figured it,” Hector said to Jimmy.
Jimmy grunted and stepped up alongside Hector. “How much does Vito know, Lawrence? What have you been told, boyo? Spare no details, lad.”
“Not much,” Larry said, his voice ragged and thin. He was still clutching between his legs and his eyes were watering from the brisk and icy wind. Hector’s eyes were stinging too…he could feel his nose getting ready to run.
Sniffling, Hector said, “Cut to the chase, mister. Tell us what you do know.”
“Just that the boss’s old lady has turned on him. Her and some other twist close to the boss,” Larry said. “Wife is going to canary. Bitch took the kid and ran. We were told to bring her in, whatever it took. Failing that, boss said we could do the wife and the other, too. We were supposed to grab the kid if we could and send her back on to Youngstown.”
Jimmy scowled and said, “This all come to you through direct instruction, or did you get wind of some of this via the grapevine, Lawrence?”
“A little of both,” Larry said. “Everyone knows the wife is on the lam. Fucking frail supposedly has some stuff on the boss. They say she’s going to turn it over to fucking Kefauver. Everyone’s looking for Mrs. Scartelli to stop that happening. Being the one to bring her in or down should bring some handsome rewards.”
No doubt that seemed a sound enough plan to the likes of these, Hector thought.
“Who’s your direct contact, Lawrence?” Jimmy leaned in close, all fury. “And don’t lie to me, because I’ll know.”
“Johnny the Lip.”
Hector rolled his eyes. “Jesus, who the hell is that supposed to be? Sounds like some goddamned Dick Tracy character.”
“I know him well enough,” Jimmy said. “The Lip is Johnny Rimbaldi. Some Chinese cooze he was running was flying on opium one night back in the late Thirties and cut Johnny, and I mean cut him good. Doc’s sewed the lips back on but they didn’t heal so well. Nerve damage. Bastard ends up wearing a portion of every drink.” Jimmy holstered his forty-five and pulled out a pad and pencil. “Give me a phone number, an address where Johnny can be found or reached.”
“What are you going to do with it?” Lawrence voice sounded stronger, like he was recovering from what Hector had done to him.
“I don’t know if I’m going to do anything with it,” Jimmy said. “Just good to have stuff like that, ’cause you never know, you know? And what possible fecking business is it of yours what I do with the information?”
Larry shrugged. Jimmy said, “What are we gonna do with you now, Larry?”
Scartelli’s stooge licked his lips, looking around. “Not kill me?”
“No, that would be cold-blooded, if no less deserved,” Hector said. “I mean, particularly given what you were prepared to do to us. That all puts you in line for killing. But lucky for you, it’s not our way. Least ways, not yet.” Hector smiled meanly. “Best that you not put us to the test.”
Nodding, Larry said, “Maybe you could just give me one shot. Leave me with a black eye or maybe a bruised cheek.”
“Something you can show poor Thomas,” Jimmy said, “is that what you mean? Something to tout you took some grief, too? Something to assure Thomas and your bosses you didn’t rat anyone out to spare yourself more damage than just those aching bollocks?”
“Yeah,” Larry said, “something like that. Say, a black eye.”
Pretty thin stuff, in other words. “I can certainly help you with that,” Hector said, making a fist. But Hector thought to himself, Anything worth doing…
***
After, Jimmy said, “A bit gratuitous, all that, wasn’t it, Hector?”
Hector’s barked knuckles tended to agree.
But Hector scoffed for Jimmy’s sake: “After what Old Larry pulled back in the restaurant there? I think he got off too easy. Besides, maybe I’m still a little sore about how my two got back up at the hotel when yours stayed down. I didn’t want to make that bloody mistake again.”
Jimmy stooped and grabbed Thomas by the wrists and dragged him over closer to Larry, who was now also unconscious. Hector figured Jimmy’s would surely be the first to rise this time. Hector had certainly done his worst to Larry to see to that.
“Here, Hector, get yours and let’s get ’em over closer to the fire escape,” Jimmy said. “We’ll cuff ’em to the angle-iron support. Eventually someone will find them or call the cops. Either way, it’ll look bad to their boss for these two boyos. Then we need to hustle, I don’t want to be late to meet Eliot.”
When the duo got back to the dining room, Meg was alone at the table, looking worried. She said, “Kate is in the restroom with Shannon, waiting to hear word the coast is clear—and yes, I checked, there’s only one way in or out.”
Hector said, “Go and fetch her then, won’t you, darlin’? Food is going to get cold and we need to eat up and scoot across town.”
Meg said, “You mean to keep eating? But those men…?”
Massaging his red and now swelling knuckles, Hector said, “You can put those particular fellas out of your mind, I swear it’s so.”
12
“A bookstore? This incorruptible friend works in a bookstore?”
If Katy had said it, it would be bad enough, but coming from Meg? That clearly hurt.
“It’s not his usual gig, not his day job, per se,” Jimmy said, looking wounded.
A man stood behind the register. He was not particularly tall. He was also rather stockier than he remained in Hector’s memory.
In the 1930s, Ness was lean and hungry and focused. Also very dapper, rather like Scott Fitzgerald.
Now he was pale, puffy and unremarkable looking, rather like F. Scott Fitzgerald at his end. Eliot’s jacket was frayed at the cuffs. His shirt collar, too. It made Hector feel worse for the way he felt about the man. It made Hector feel still worse for Jimmy.
Eliot was carrying drinker’s weight and his fuller face made his chin seem weaker than maybe it really was. The ex T-man’s gray eyes were bleary and his eyelids were red-rimmed—looked to Hector like it hadn’t been so many hours since he last tied one on.
>
Jimmy shot Hector a look that warned him to hold his tongue. But Hector wasn’t disposed to be that mean, not to as dear a friend as Jimmy.
The big Irish cop hugged Ness to him. “It’s been too long, Chief.”
“Much too long,” Eliot said. He clapped Jim’s back. As he did that, Ness held out another hand to Hector. The rangy writer’s hand engulfed Eliot’s. Ness smiled and said, “Hector, it’s good to see you again. It’s really been a long time for the two of us.”
“It has.” Hector gestured at the bookshelves around them. “I hope to God you aggressively hand-sell my oeuvre, Eliot.”
Ness smiled and shook loose of Jim’s bear hug. He said, “Look over here.”
The former Untouchable led them to the mystery section and pointed to a long shelf set at eye-level. There were hardcovers and paperbacks—first editions and reading copies of Hector’s myriad novels.
Whistling, Hector pulled down a hardcover of first novel, Rhapsody in Black. He looked at the dedication inside to Brinke Devlin and smiled.
The book was in excellent condition despite being a quarter century old. Hector next checked the price penciled faintly on the flyleaf. Frowning, he said, “They ask, and they get, about thirty dollars more for this book in New York City.”
“We’re not in New York,” Eliot said. “And I really only work here a couple of days a week as a clerk. I don’t set the prices, Hec. I’m just here to make some extra money for Christmas, you know?”
Eliot looked embarrassed. Jimmy had confided to Hector that Ness—as he had been off and on since leaving his post as Cleveland’s safety director—was between various ill-fated business ventures. Hector smiled and said, “I know how it is, buddy. It’s always money, for all of us. Always on the scratch. You married again?”
“That’s right,” Eliot said. “I believe this one will go the distance. And you? Married again, too, Hector?”
Hector shook his head. “Not this year.”
“We adopted a boy,” Eliot said. “His name is Bobby. He’s a great kid. It’s great having a child.”
“I’m sure it is,” Hector said.
Jimmy cleared his throat, said, “Is there a place we can talk? Our situation is showing no signs of improving with age. Quite the reverse, actually.”
Eliot nodded. “Heat is still on you then?”
“As recently as ten minutes ago, and furiously so,” Jimmy said. “Bastards were prepared to shoot up Hector Boyardee’s place to get at these two ladies. No worries about them following us here, that’s not going to happen. Hec and I saw to that with those ones. But, yes, our problems are actually mounting, Eliot.”
“Then we’ll talk in back,” Eliot said. “Just let me put up the out-to-lunch sign and lock the front door.”
Megan was browsing over the shelf packed with Hector books. “I’ll catch up you back there,” she said. She pulled down that vintage copy of Rhapsody in Black, checked the photo of a smiling, twenty-five-year-old Hector on the back of the book. Eliot led them to a storeroom dominated by a long, battered table surrounded by chairs. Crates of books were stacked around the walls of the room. Shannon sat next to Hector. She picked up a piece of stray paper and bummed another pencil from the writer.
Eliot said, “I hear the Kefauver focus, in so far as our region is concerned, is on targeting Vito’s Scartelli’s underbosses. Those would be Morris Kleinman, Louis Rothkopf, Sammy Tucker and Moe Dalitz. Nearly six-dozen subpoenas are out ’round these parts. Maybe a sixth of those are proving hard to serve. Notion seems to be to fire at everyone and maybe put pressure on some weak link to get at Scartelli himself. So far, that doesn’t seem to be producing results.”
“His minions will never turn on my husband,” Katy said. “He pays them far too well. And he rules by fear. He’s a sadist. And he knows too many things about his men, things he’s ordered done, and not always because they needed doing. He ordered those things done because they would bind his men to him. Make the cost of betrayal too high, inevitably self-destructive.”
“It’s always the aim of these sorts,” Eliot said. “Snorky ruled his organization the same way. I mean, before he started losing his mind to the…” Eliot looked at Shannon and said, “To that disease.”
Snorky—Ness meant Al Capone. Glory Days stuff, Hector thought. And “that disease” was a virulent dose of Syphilis that left Big Al a shuffling drooler at his end.
Ness continued, “Kefauver’s guy here now, doing the groundwork for the great Lakes Region, is a lawyer named Joseph Gibson. He’s the committee’s counsel. If we can get you two ladies to him, well, he should be in position to get you some official protection. The kind that won’t sell out.”
“That would maybe do,” Hector said. He lit a Pall Mall. “But I like going to the very top. You have any truck to get us a connection to Hoover, Eliot?”
“No chance with the FBI,” Ness said. “Hoover’s got resentments about me and my squad that go back to Chicago and Capone days. Besides, Jimmy said you might have some trustworthy federal connections of your own.”
“Time will soon tell,” Hector said.
“I do, however, have a few last strands stretching back into the treasury department,” Eliot said. “I might be able to reach out to the senator through those channels. Maybe get some reliable escort for you that way. I mean, if you want me to try.”
“Anything at all,” Katy said, imploring him. “I just want this over so Shannon and I can disappear to somewhere safe to start our lives over—” Hector recoiled at that as she said it (and did he notice a sudden tonal shift for the last?): “—just the two of us.”
Hector was glad Meg was still out in the stacks, browsing over his goddamn books for secondary-market sale out there.
Eliot said to Katy, “We’ll see what we can do, Ma’am.” He opened a filing cabinet and pulled out four shot glasses and a bottle of gin. He raised his eyebrows, “Katy?”
“Yes, thank you,” she said.
Eliot looked to Hector, who resisted meeting eyes with Jimmy. Hector said, “Sorry, I’m just not a gin drinker. Actually detest the stuff.” In fact, Hector had always been distrustful of those who drank gin. Some of his life’s deepest grief had been fueled by avid gin-swillers.
The former treasury agent who’d first made his name shutting down bootleg gin mills said, “And for you, Jim?”
“Uh, none for me either, Eliot,” Jimmy said. His voice sounded pained. “You know me,” Jimmy said, pulling out his flask and pouring a little dribble in a shot glass. “I’m strictly a whiskey man.” Then Jimmy nodded at Hector. “Except when this heathen entices me with that Scottish single malt stuff.” Jimmy winked. “You know—the whisky with no ‘e’.”
Shannon had finished her pencil sketch, this one of a castle.
Hector saw a stack of plain white paper and said to Eliot, “Mind if I snag a couple of sheets?”
“Help yourself,” Eliot said. Hector took a couple of sheets of paper and handed them to Shannon.
The little girl said, “Thank-you.”
Hector remembered then and pulled out the small box of crayons he’d bought in a brief stop at a pharmacy where he’d detoured to restock on smokes and get a new flint for his vintage Zippo. Shannon squealed when she saw the box. “What should I draw now?”
Hector feared that if Shannon was left to her own devices some other sketch of Meg or himself might ensue, so he said, “What about a puppy?”
Shannon set to the task, her tongue screwed out one side of her mouth.
Meg found them then. She was carrying two hardcover copies of Hector’s novels. “Haven’t read these yet,” she said as Hector pulled out a chair for her.
“It really isn’t necessary you do read those,” he said to her.
Meg said, “But I want to read them.”
Katy was listening to them; she held her tongue. She gestured at Shannon’s drawing and said, “That’s very nice, honey.”
Eliot poured himself three more finger
s of gin. As he drank, his voice grew a little louder; his gestures broader. He said, “Would really help the campaign if you could give me some notion of what you have to share, Mrs. Scartelli. I hear, also, that you have some incriminating documents secreted somewhere.”
“I’ll only give those directly to the senator, in person. And only when I have a written assurance of new documentation of mine and my daughter’s identities, and some financial provisions guaranteed to help the two of us establish and maintain our new lives, Mr. Ness.”
Hector couldn’t bear to look at Meg as those selfish words were uttered.
Katy—that self-centered sorry piece of work and witchery. Some small part of Hector, one deep inside, was sorely tempted then to do Vito’s bidding, pro bono. It was a fleeting urge, but it was surely there. Realizing what was inside him left Hector feeling a little shaken, a little ashamed.
“I will not turn over my papers to anybody else,” Katy continued. “I simply will not do that. I’ll only give them to the senator, and only once he’s agreed to my terms.”
“She’s quite indomitable on that point,” Hector said, his voice was low and raw.
“’Tis true, Eliot,” Jimmy said. “My patience with this lass on that front is exhausted.”
Eliot sat back in his chair. He ran his fingers through his graying, sandy-brown hair that was parted slightly off-center and slicked back. “I get off at three. I’ll make some calls and see what I can do.”
Hector said, “We’ll call you?”
“No,” Eliot said. “Let’s set a meeting, somewhere with lots of people to discourage anything else like you hinted happening at that Italian restaurant. How about five o’clock? We’ll meet at the Kent Hotel. Do you know the place, Jim?”
Hector felt bad for Jimmy—he looked a little sick. Jimmy had earlier told Hector the Kent was reputed to be Ness’ favorite current watering hole. Jimmy had been fleetingly heartened when he heard Ness hadn’t chosen it for the place for their present meeting.
The Running Kind: A Hector Lassiter novel Page 8