“Lotta guys up this way make some money workin’ for Jimmy and Mickey,” Sean said. “Figured I’d get in on it.”
“They have you do anything besides moving whiskey off trucks?” He tried to make it sound like a joke.
“Shit, yeah,” Sean said. His pitch suggested he thought of John as someone to impress.
“Like what?”
“Stuff,” Sean said. “Just stuff.”
“Where you from?” John asked.
“Right here.”
“You still live here?”
“Of course,” Sean said.
Looking at the kid now, John could tell that this was a potentially big night for young Sean Sullivan. The kid had started to sweat.
“Hey,” Sean said, opening his door. “Here he is.”
Mickey had stepped from the candy store looking as vacant as usual, the stick of a Tootsie Pop jutting from between his lips. He crossed over to the car and jerked a thumb at Sean, motioning for him to get into the Camaro’s cramped back seat. Sean managed with some difficulty while Mickey chucked the Tootsie Pop down the street.
Once inside the car, Mickey motioned for him to head down Tenth Avenue.
“What’s the deal?” he said before pulling out of the space. “You didn’t say nothin’ about this kid coming.”
“So?”
“So I’m not a goddamn taxi, picking people up and dropping them off.”
“There’s a place on Eighty-fifth Street,” Mickey said. “The Samjetta. You know it?”
“No.”
“Bar and grill. We’re going across the street from there,” Mickey said. Like his phone calls from the pay phone on Tenth Avenue, his apartment phone, and the telephone in the candy store, he spoke cryptically, his intentions demanding interpretation.
Pulling out onto Tenth Avenue, John said, “What’s across the street?”
“Liquor store.”
They drove mostly in silence, with the majority of the chatter coming from Sean in the back seat. He spoke of nonsense and seemed to choose his words with tedium, eager to impress Mickey, or at least prove to him that he was one of the gang. And Sean Sullivan was not quite part of Mickey and Jimmy’s gang. Thinking of quiet, subdued Ashleigh who’d not spoken at the Cloverleaf the entire night, and of the guy in the knitted Islanders cap who’d driven Mickey to sell John the .32, he knew that Sean Sullivan did not truly fit in. Which bothered John. Was it so obvious he, too, did not fit in? Was this the roundup, the weeding out?
Driving, he glanced in the rearview to see if he could spot Kersh’s car following them.
He couldn’t.
As Tenth Avenue turned into Amsterdam, the traffic grew more congested. Mickey got lost and had them circle the block a number of times. They eventually continued west until they hit Riverside Drive.
“The hell’s going on here, Mickey?” He could see the lights of the Henry Hudson Parkway at the other end of Riverside Park from here.
Mumbling to himself, scratching his head, Mickey told him to turn around and head back toward Amsterdam Avenue.
Traffic grew thicker, and Mickey began to collect his thoughts once they reached Amsterdam.
“Stop-stop-stop,” Mickey said, leaning forward in his seat and peering through the windshield. A row of shops and restaurants lined the street, accentuated by the lights of passing vehicles.
“Where?” he said. Across the street, he could see the Samjetta—a family-style steakhouse with a brick front illuminated by red and yellow neon lights. It looked like no place Mickey O’Shay would have anything to do with.
“Slow down.” Mickey turned and looked out his window, his nose only two inches from the glass. He was pointing across the street, opposite the Samjetta. “There’s a, uh … you see that liquor store up ahead? See the alley? Turn in there. Go around back.”
The alleyway ran between a liquor store and Pat’s Laundromat, dark and narrow. John maneuvered the Camaro through it and stopped alongside a huddle of trash cans. A stand of doors without knobs lined the walls of the brick alley. He caught a glimpse of Sean’s white face in the rearview. The kid looked about ready to wet his pants.
He’d made up his mind long ago that he could shoot and kill Mickey without hesitation if he even suspected something off-kilter. Now, wedged between the brick siding of two stores, the thought resurfaced in his head. He knew there would be no use trying to arrest him, trying to subdue him if Mickey decided to break bad. Mickey would not give him the opportunity. He would be like a wild boar ensnared in a trap: there would be no way to cut him loose or even cage him. The only option was to kill.
Mickey got out of the car and headed down the alley to one of the doors embedded in the brick wall. Sean was quick to follow, already pushing against the passenger seat and pulling himself from the car. He nearly stumbled getting out of the car, managing to keep himself from crashing to the ground only by catching the wall with both hands at the last possible second.
“In an alley just before Eighty-fifth Street, off Amsterdam,” he said to the transmitter on the dash. “Couple doors back here. Looks like they lead to the back of the shops. We’re going inside.”
He slipped the cigarette lighter transmitter into his jacket pocket, although he was certain he would be out of Kersh’s range once he stepped inside the building. Regardless, he shut the car down and got out. Behind him, he was aware of the traffic droning down the street, and the louder idles of the cars stopping along the rows of shops. Mickey knocked against one of the doors and stood there, digging in one ear with the pinkie of his right hand. Like someone suddenly struck by a momentous thought, he dug a filthy cigarette from the breast pocket of his green coat and stuck it behind his other ear.
As John approached, the alley door creaked open several inches. There was no discernible light inside. Mickey placed a hand on the inside of the door and pushed it open, wasting no time with a leisurely entrance. On his heels, Sean Sullivan, slack-faced and wide-eyed, crept over the threshold while John counted three beats in his head. He didn’t know what to expect—a series of gunshots or the shouts of haughty laughter. He heard neither.
Casting one final glance toward the street at the mouth of the alley, he crept inside the building and heard the door slam.
Around him, darkness prevailed.
Parked along Amsterdam Avenue, Bill Kersh chewed disconcertedly on his left thumb.
“Goddamn kid,” he muttered. His mind regressed to earlier that day and to their conversation in the pit. It wasn’t so much John’s words that had bothered him—he was young and anxious and willing to take risks, and a lot of what the kid said made good sense. No, what bothered Kersh was the way the kid had looked, like someone just off a caffeine rush. John was wired, too wrapped up in the case. That same machinelike quality that Kersh had noticed in him the night they loaded up the Ryder truck with the Canadian whiskey was still there, yet it had changed in some way. His tenacity had turned into urgency and was slowly driving the kid over the edge. Too much more of this and Kersh feared—
But he didn’t want to think about that. Hopefully it would all be over soon. Brett Chominksy was not one to be swayed by the opinions of Roger Biddleman and would pull the plug after too much time, no matter what evidence John happened to bring to the table.
At least, Kersh hoped.
Looking at the row of shops across the street, he noticed that Pat’s Laundromat and a liquor store stood on either side of the alley’s entrance. The lights were on in the liquor store, the neon pink Open sign sizzling in the window.
Kersh was torn. His instinct told him to give John a few minutes in the store before strolling inside, posing as a customer, casing the joint. Yet John had gotten his fingers into him as well, and some part of him—however small—told him to bide his time and give the kid a chance, see what happens.
“Where the hell are the lights?” Mickey said somewhere ahead of him in the darkness.
His eyes adjusting, John could see a faint strip of y
ellow light on the floor across the room. Light from behind a closed door, he imagined. The place smelled strongly of cigar smoke and provolone cheese.
His hand was in his jacket pocket, his fingers around the hilt of his gun, when the lights came on.
They were standing in a storage room with a large fan humming in a caged casing embedded in the far wall. Around them, cases of beer were stacked to shoulder height, some on handcarts and still wrapped in cellophane. Playboy centerfolds were taped to the walls, and there was a clipboard hanging from a nail above a case of Amstel Light, a pencil dangling from it by a greasy length of string.
A thick-shouldered man with graying hair stood by a closed door—the door leading out into the store, most likely—with a look of mild amusement on his face. In a T-shirt and checkered flannel pajama pants, he looked as if he’d just been roused from sleep.
“Keep your voice down, Mickey,” the man said, scratching between the folds of his unshaven chin. “The hell’s the matter with you?”
Uninterested in conversation, Mickey pulled the cellophane from one of the cases of beer and proceeded to bust open the carton. From between two stacks of cased beer, Sean watched Mickey without expression, his fingers working themselves into the fabric of his pants.
Sighing, the man by the door said, “It’s warm.”
“Don’t care,” Mickey said, pulling out a bottle and twisting off the cap. He drank half the bottle in two huge gulps, spilling some down the front of his shirt.
“What are we doing here, Mickey?” John said, his eyes shifting from Mickey O’Shay to the guy in the checkered flannel pants.
The guy in flannel looked at him. “Your friends want beer, Mickey, they pay for it. I ain’t runnin’ a goddamn charity here.”
“Take a walk,” Mickey said, initiating the man’s retreat back to the front of his store.
John turned his gaze on Mickey, who sat passively atop a stack of crates finishing off his beer. “We gonna get to the point now, or what?”
“I know you’re a mover, John,” Mickey said. “There’s a bartender across the street that needs to disappear. Five grand split between the two of you for the hit.”
“Are you for real?” he said.
Mickey didn’t answer, didn’t even bother to meet his eyes.
“Who is this guy?” he asked. “And why me and the kid?”
“Forget it,” Mickey said. “That don’t matter. What matters is if you two do the job or not. Bartender’s name is Ricky Laughlin. I’ll give you guys the guns to do the job. You can keep ‘em along with the money after you’re done.”
“How come you don’t do it yourself?”
“Guy’s expecting it to come from me,” Mickey answered, almost with a laugh.
That’s not it. He wants to test me, to own me.
Mickey pulled himself off the cases of beer and shrugged off his coat. “He’s across the street right now,” Mickey said. “Go over there, check him out, case the joint. You want the job, give me a call in a couple days.”
With nothing more to say, Mickey slipped two more beers from the case and started loading up his coat.
John looked at Sean, saw that the kid had nearly run his fingers down to the bone against the fabric of his pants. Sean looked over at him, too, uncertain if he should speak or not. There was a fire in his eyes—the same look a kid gets when his old man entrusts him for the first time with the keys to the family car.
“Come on,” John said, turning and heading for the door.
Outside, he found himself scanning for any signs of Kersh’s car at the mouth of the alley. If Kersh had kept on their tail, then he was playing it smart and hanging back a block or two.
“Holy shit!” Sean said, walking quickly at John’s side toward Amsterdam. “He ever call you for a hit before?”
“Nope.”
“Goddamn! I mean, like, this is the real deal.”
They paused at the curb to wait for a break in traffic. Across the street, the lights of the Samjetta were reflected in puddles in the street and on the windshields of passing cars. He took two quick glances in both directions and could not see Kersh’s sedan, which meant nothing. Bill Kersh had long since mastered the art of camouflage.
“The Samjetta,” John said, for the sole benefit of Kersh, who might now be within range of the transmitter in his pocket. “Looks like a steakhouse.”
“What do you think this guy Laughlin did?” Sean asked.
“Beats me.”
Between a break in traffic, the two of them scurried across the street like rats. Sean slammed through a puddle and unleashed a string of foul language. And despite the large neon letters announcing The Samjetta just above their heads, Sean turned and was about to continue down the street.
“Hey,” John said to him, opening the front door of the restaurant.
“Over here, Sean.”
In the moments before they entered the restaurant, their images were reflected in tinted windows along Amsterdam Avenue.
The Samjetta was a cozy restaurant with a smattering of tables and booths to the right of the front doors, and a long mahogany bar to the left. The walls were alternating brick and polished wood, adorned with miscellaneous clothing from different generations. Tonight, there was a fair amount of traffic in the place, though there were still a few tables open. The bar, too, was only mildly crowded—mostly men in business suits sitting in small groups.
Sean headed immediately for the bar, but John grabbed him by the forearm and directed him over to one of the empty tables.
The kid looked annoyed. “What’s wrong?”
“We’ll sit here.”
“That him?” Sean was already straining to stare at the bartender from across the floor.
“I don’t know. Could be.”
The bartender was tall and slender with a crop of black hair trimmed close to his head. He sported a goatee and a diamond stud in his left ear. From where he sat, John could make out the bluish swirls of a tattoo on the side of the bartender’s neck.
“I think that’s him,” Sean said, unable to peel his eyes from the bartender.
“Hey.” John drummed a finger on the table to attract the kid’s attention. “You’re gonna do this, huh?”
“What? The hit? Shit, yeah. Why?”
“You ever hear of this guy before?”
“Ricky Laughlin?” Sean shook his head. “No way.”
“Must’ve done something.” John looked Sean over. “What’s the deal with that star you carved on your arm? You said you’d tell me later.”
That seemed to collect Sean’s attention. Jarred by the question, the kid turned and faced him, the excitement drained from his face. On the tabletop, his fingers were pushing against the polished surface, as they’d done against the fabric of his pants just a few minutes ago. He looked like someone trying to smooth wrinkles out of the wood.
“Jacob Goldman, you mean,” Sean said.
“Yeah, that’s the name, I think.”
“Just someone I want to remember.”
“He’s that important you gotta carve a star in your arm?”
Without hesitation, Sean said, “To me he is.”
“Come on,” John urged. “Tell me.”
As if to enhance the story, Sean rolled up his sleeve and exposed his filleted arm. Beneath the harsh lighting above their table, the scars looked almost purple and plumped out to grotesque exaggeration.
“Jacob Goldman was a guy who had a lot of money,” Sean said. “He was married four times. His fourth wife was my mother, and she split with him. I don’t know where they went or even if they’re still married. This,” he said, pointing to the star-shaped scar, “reminds me of that bastard. Every day. And I’m gonna find him someday. All the money in the world won’t save him then.”
“Had to carve it in your arm?”
“I see it every day,” Sean Sullivan said.
“That why you follow Mickey O’Shay around?”
Uncomfortable, Sean sh
rugged. “Where you from?”
“Brooklyn.”
“Around here, you’re either with Mickey and Jimmy, or you’re chased by them. That’s fact. These guys don’t mess around. You wanna make some money, they’re the go-to guys.”
“How well you know ‘em?”
“We’re pretty close,” Sean said. John could tell that he was lying, that the kid was no more a part of Mickey and Jimmy’s group than John was. “I do some jobs for them, stuff like that. Ain’t nobody out here tells them how to do business. Not even the cops. Cops are fucking scared of ‘em, man.” The right side of his mouth hooked up into a partial grin. “All the bars pay ‘em kickbacks. Most of the unions down there, too. If there’s money bein’ made in Hell’s Kitchen, Mickey and Jimmy get a piece of it.”
“What about people who don’t wanna pay? What about bars that don’t pay them kickbacks?”
“Show me one,” Sean said with little humor. “Everyone’s scared to death. Even the guineas want to work with them.”
“Get the hell out of here. The Italians?”
“It’s true,” the kid insisted, now beaming with a corrupted pride. “Listen,” he continued, “you wanna hear something crazy? I mean, like, absolutely fucking nuts?”
“What’s that?”
“Just something I heard, something I—”
“Yeah?” John pressed.
Sean leaned closer to him from across the table, his voice dropping an octave. “There was this bookie, some Jew bastard named Horace Green, collecting loan-sharking debts for a while in Hell’s Kitchen. Mickey and Jimmy get wind of this, they pay him a little visit, tell him they want a piece of the action. They tell him they’ll keep an eye on him, make sure nobody comes around and rips him off. Protection, right? Well, Green tells ‘em to forget it, that he’s got the Italians already watching his back and he don’t need a couple Irish punks from the West Side buggin’ him. Anyway, all’s cool for a couple nights. Then Green shows up in the neighborhood again to collect some vigs, probably in a good mood and everything, and at the end of the day he stops off for a few drinks at a neighborhood bar, right? Later, as he’s comin’ outta the bar in the middle of the night, there’s Mickey and Jimmy, leaning against the guy’s car. This bastard Green tries worming his way around them, probably startin’ to blubber like a goddamn baby, but Jimmy and Mickey, they don’t let nothin’ go—you know what I mean?”
Shamrock Alley Page 28