The Heavenly Fugitive

by Gilbert, Morris

  “Yeah, but you can’t get rich takin’ pictures.”

  Ryan did not answer but sat quietly in the chair. He listened as Tony continued talking, going back once again to Rosa. “She comes in drunk and then she throws it up to me that I sell liquor. What am I going to do?”

  Ryan Kildare had no answer for that, of course—at least not any that Tony Morino would have accepted. He waited, and Tony began talking about the old days when things were different. He seemed to have forgotten why he had sent for Ryan, but finally he said directly, “I want you to come back and be my lawyer again.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Morino. I thought that might be what you wanted, but I can’t do it.”

  Morino stared at the younger man. “Why not?”

  “I’ve got other things on the fire right now.”

  “Yeah, I know. Dom told me. You’re not makin’ any money at it, though.”

  “No, I’m not, but I’m doing what I want to do. I’m helping some people who maybe wouldn’t get help otherwise.”

  “What about Leo Marx? You don’t think he’s forgotten you, do you?”

  “I don’t expect he has.”

  “He’ll get you one day, Kildare, you can believe that. Now, if you come to work for me, I can give you some protection. Leo knows if he hits me or any of my guys, I hit him.”

  “Well, that’s good of you to offer, but I’ve already got some protection.”

  “Oh yeah? Who’s that?”

  “I like to think that it’s God. The Lord is my Shepherd. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. I’m trusting in the Lord to take care of me.”

  Tony stared at Ryan, then shook his head. “I heard you got religion, Kildare. That’s okay. I ain’t knockin’ it, but it seems to me that we need each other—”

  The door opened suddenly, and Jamie came bounding in. “Hey, Dad, Mr. Winslow says I can go with him while he takes pictures tomorrow if it’s okay with you.”

  “What’s all this?” Tony said.

  “Oh, this is Wes Winslow, Amelia’s cousin,” Ryan said quickly. “He’s a fine professional photographer. It would be a good experience for Jamie to go with him.”

  Tony Morino was suspicious of almost everyone. He questioned Wes for some fifteen minutes and finally got it through his head what the plans were for tomorrow. “You mean to tell me you’re going up on top of one of those unfinished steel buildings? Why, I can’t let my son go up there!”

  “That’s up to you, Mr. Morino. I don’t think there’ll really be any danger. There are platforms built, and believe me, I won’t get within fifty feet of the edge. But he’s your son.”

  “Please, Dad, let me go!”

  Tony Morino looked at the boy and suddenly felt a longing to do something right. “All right, son, but I’ll have to send Dom along, you understand.”

  “That’s fine,” Wes said quickly. “Be glad to have him.”

  ****

  As Dom stopped the car and let the trio out, he said, “I’ll bring the kid wherever you say tomorrow, Mr. Winslow. Mr. Morino says to take you anywhere you need to go. I’m really glad you’re doing it for the kid. He needs somebody like you.”

  “It’ll be fun, Dom. Do you like high places?”

  “I get sick to my stomach when I step up on a curb, but I’ll go.”

  “I’m not too crazy about getting up on those things myself, but that’s where you get the best pictures.”

  After they got out of the car, Wes said good-bye and went to his hotel. Ryan turned to Amelia and asked about Rosa.

  “She’s all right. Almost over her sickness, but she’s a very unhappy young woman.”

  “So is the boy, I understand, from what Wes says. He’s ashamed of his father.”

  “I think the whole family is. That must hurt Tony pretty bad.”

  “I would think so.”

  Amelia had wanted to ask one question ever since leaving the Morino estate, and now she did. “I’d guess that Tony wants you to go back to work for him. Am I right?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Will you do it?”

  “No.”

  Amelia was suddenly aware of a strength in Ryan that had not been there when they had first met. She turned to face him. “I remember the night you left. You said a woman ought to know when a man loved her.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “I assume you’ve gotten over it by now.”

  “No.”

  “No? Just no? Can’t you say any more than one word?”

  “I don’t think love really changes, Amelia.”

  “Of course it does. People change.”

  “I don’t agree.”

  “Then you’re a fool.”

  “Quite possibly I am, but Shakespeare says, ‘Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle’s compass come.’ ”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means when a man loves a woman, he doesn’t love her for her outward beauty but for something else. Something inside.”

  Amelia glanced at him skeptically. “You wouldn’t believe how many lines I’ve heard since I came to New York. Men have tried everything to get to me.”

  “This is no line, Amelia.” He stepped forward, and before she could move away, he put his arms around her and pulled her close. “I kissed you once,” he said, “and I’m about to do it again.”

  Amelia should have protested, but she was curious. She remained still in his arms and let his lips meet hers. She felt a rush of pleasure at his embrace as he held her tighter, his own feelings for her obvious in the warmth of his touch. He stepped back and looked deeply into her eyes, not speaking but asking in his expression if she did not indeed return his love.

  She was quick to respond to his unspoken question, pushing him away and turning from his gaze. “This means nothing, Ryan.”

  “I’ll tell you something, Amelia,” he said, cupping her face in his hands and turning her to look at him again. “I still love you. I love the woman that’s in you potentially . . . who you can be . . . and will be someday.”

  “It’ll never happen, Ryan,” she said, pulling out of his grasp. “Leave me alone.” She turned quickly and walked away, not looking back. His kiss had disturbed her terribly, and she knew she would not forget it anytime soon. She remembered the time they had been together before—before he had disappeared and returned a changed man. Back then he’d had the power to stir her, and now, to her dismay, she found that he still did. She hated it!

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Trap

  The year 1927 was a mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous in America. Charles Lindbergh became the first person to cross the Atlantic alone by airplane. His audacious endeavor grabbed the world’s attention as no event had done since the signing of the Armistice in 1918. The twenty-five-year-old had found a company to build a plane to his own specifications. The Spirit of St. Louis was built in a hurry, and Lindbergh became an international hero upon completion of his thirty-six-hundred-mile trip.

  At the other end of the celebrity spectrum, Mae West, the burlesque entertainer with the overblown figure, became the antithesis of the chic, boyish flapper of the twenties. She wrote and starred in a play blatantly entitled Sex and was imprisoned for ten days for indecency, but only after giving three hundred seventy-five performances.

  The silent motion picture met an abrupt end in 1927 as the words uttered by Al Jolson in the film The Jazz Singer changed the motion-picture industry forever. Every producer rushed at once into the production of movies that had sound.

  In sports it was the year of the famous “long count” bout in which Gene Tunny was flattened by a vicious blow from Jack Dempsey. Then the match was decided on a mere technicality. Dempsey failed to retreat to a neutral corner, giving Tunny time to recover and win the battle.

  Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy first appeared on the silver screen, as did Clara Bow, the famous “It” gir
l. This movie star appeared in the 1927 movie entitled It, meaning sex appeal. She embodied the flapper ideal: bobbed and tousled hair, slim hips, bee-stung mouth, long beaded necklaces, and a voracious appetite for scandal.

  In the world of industry, Henry Ford finally admitted that the Model T was outdated and closed his plant to retool for the Model A, which would prove to do even better. In technology, X rays were used for the first time, and the iron lung was invented, which for a time was a polio victim’s only hope of survival. In communications, the first transatlantic telephone call was made in January 1927.

  On the political scene, President Coolidge announced he would not run for president in 1928. Massachusetts became the first state to require automobile insurance. And the Supreme Court ruled illegal income as taxable, allowing them to demand payment from the likes of Al Capone, whose yearly income was $105 million, the largest gross private income to date for an American citizen.

  And so, with the world ever changing, the year 1927 moved forward, filled with the excitement of the times. Yet no one realized what a dark and ominous future lay ahead. In the final year of the decade a stock market crash would shake America to its foundation. Very few, however, in the year 1927 ever dreamed that such a reversal of America’s fortune was looming on the horizon.

  ****

  Cigar smoke filled the air, and the raw smell of alcohol laced the room. Five men were seated around a table, all of them a part of Leo Marx’s organization. He had divided his territory in New York and assigned a lieutenant to each section. All of these men had come up through the ranks of organized crime until they were now at the very pinnacle of their success.

  Marx looked around briefly, sipped from his whiskey glass, then began to lay out his plans.

  “All right, here’s the way it’ll play out. We’re going to take Big Tony and his whole organization out.”

  Jake Prado, always right beside Marx, looked up. His eyes usually looked cold and almost dead, but now there appeared a slight glitter in them. “That’ll suit me. He needs to be taken down.”

  Sitting across from Marx, a short, stocky man with a bullish face and a crop of slick black hair shook his head. “I don’t know, Leo. That’s a big chunk to bite off.”

  “What’s the matter, Frank, you haven’t got the stomach for it?”

  Frank Delano controlled the Lower East Side. He had killed men often, and no one ever accused him of being afraid. He put his strange light-gray eyes on Prado and whispered, “You want to find out if I’m afraid, Jake?”

  “All right, we can’t be fightin’ among ourselves, Frank. I know it’s going to be tough, but Morino’s not what he was. We’re gonna start pushing. I want you all to start taking bigger bites out of his territory. Let’s hit some of his deliveries too. We take what we can and ruin the rest of it.”

  A small, dapper man wearing an immaculate striped suit smoothed his mustache down and murmured in a voice soft as a summer breeze, “That may bring on a war, Leo.”

  “It’s a war we’ll win,” Leo said. “He’s got nobody in the number two spot.”

  “What about Dominic?”

  “He’s just an errand boy. Don’t worry about him. When Tony goes down”—Leo exposed his teeth in a meaningless grin—”we’ll take it all.”

  ****

  Almost at the exact moment that Leo was instructing his men to open what amounted to a gang war throughout the city, Lee Novak was meeting with his crew of agents to lay out special plans from top government officials to turn up the heat on New York’s criminal gangs. He’d been given almost unlimited authority to do whatever was necessary to bring them down.

  War had been declared on all sides.

  ****

  Jamie Morino was talking as fast as he possibly could. He was showing Rosa the new camera Wes Winslow had helped him buy, and his eyes shone like stars. “He’s going to teach me how to use it. I’m going to meet him over at City Hall right now to take pictures. Why don’t you come along, sis?” Jamie said. “I can get some pictures of you next to some big shots.”

  Rosa laughed. “All right, I think I will.”

  Dom Costello drove the two to City Hall, and on the way the big man listened indulgently as James rattled on about the camera. Dom winked at Rosa, who was sitting in the front seat beside him, and she winked back. “Maybe you’ll get a chance to see your old boyfriend,” he teased her.

  Rosa instantly glared at him. “What boyfriend?”

  “Oh, come on, you were pretty sweet on Phil Winslow at one time.”

  “That was a long time ago. I’m over that now.”

  Dom saw the defensiveness in the young woman and shrugged his shoulders, saying no more.

  When they arrived at City Hall, Jamie shouted, “Look, there’s Wes over there! Stop the car, Dom!”

  “Wait a minute! Don’t go jumping out. You’ll kill yourself.”

  Jamie, however, ignored the bodyguard’s instructions, hopping out as soon as the car stopped and running across the street to greet Wes.

  “Jamie’s found a good friend there,” Dom said to Rosa.

  “Yes, I guess it’s been good for him,” Rosa agreed. “He didn’t have anybody to talk with.”

  “Well, I’ll park the car. Don’t know how long this will take. I s’pose he’ll want to take a picture of everybody in the building.”

  Despite Rosa’s denial of her feelings for Phil Winslow, she had actually come along to City Hall in the hope of seeing him. Now that he worked for the DA, she knew he frequented the courtrooms at City Hall. She moved quickly to where her brother and Wes were talking, and when Wes greeted her, she smiled at him.

  “Come along, Rosa,” Wes said. “I’m going to take some pictures of the mayor first. Maybe I can take one of you shaking his hand.”

  “He’d never shake hands with anybody named Morino,” Rosa said bitterly.

  Wes blinked with surprise and then saw a look of embarrassment on Jamie’s face. Quickly he covered by saying, “Well, there’s lots of things to take pictures of. Come on, we’ll find some of them.”

  Rosa enjoyed her trip out after her bout with the flu had kept her in for so long. April had brought refreshingly warm weather and spring flowers. The courthouse was warm inside but not overly so. She followed Wes and Jamie around from room to room, when suddenly her breath caught at seeing Phil step out of an office and start down the hall.

  “Phil!” she called out and headed toward him. She saw Phil turn, and at that moment a young woman came out of the same room he had appeared from. She reached up and took Phil’s arm and smiled at him in a familiar way. Rosa recognized her at once. It was Mary Emmets, the debutante of the year. Her father was a wealthy speculator with a seat on the stock market, and the society papers considered her the catch of the moment. She was not a tall woman but well shaped, and she held on to Phil with a proprietary air.

  Phil spotted Rosa just then as she approached the pair. “Oh, Miss Emmets,” he said, “I’d like you to meet Miss Rosa Morino.”

  Mary Emmets stared at Rosa and did not speak for a moment. “I’m glad to meet you,” she said coldly.

  Rosa knew that look. She was certain the woman had recognized the name and was disgusted. She saw Mary’s hand tighten on Phil’s arm, then heard her saying, “We’d better hurry, Phil, or we’ll be late.”

  Phil lingered for a moment, although the young woman was tugging at his arm. “Will you be around later, Rosa? I’d like to talk to you.”

  “No, I’m leaving now.”

  Rosa had not intended to leave just then, but the frigid look in the socialite’s eyes infuriated her. She and Jamie were both hurt by what their father was, but rarely did she meet such blatant rejection. She turned and left the building at once.

  Dom was leaning against the car talking with two other men when Rosa walked up to him. “Hey, where’s Jamie?” he asked.

  “He’s staying awhile. I’m leaving, Dom.”

  “You can’t do that!”

 
“Oh yeah? Watch me!”

  Rosa leaned into the street to wave down a passing cab. The driver pulled right over, and she climbed in, saying, “Take me to Twenty-second Street.”

  Twenty minutes later she was sitting in a speakeasy, already tipsy from too many drinks. She had come here before but never alone, and it was only a few moments before a man came over to her and leered at her. “You all alone?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Maybe you’d like a little company.”

  “Maybe I would . . . .”

  ****

  Leo Marx was unhappy. His plan had not worked, for although his lieutenants had followed his orders to put the pressure on Big Tony Morino’s operation, Morino’s men were tough. As a matter of fact, they had hurt Marx worse than he had hurt them!

  Marx had withdrawn for two days after the latest sharp battle between the two forces. He had drunk more than usual and had become obsessed with his losses. Morino wasn’t his only problem. Lee Novak’s federal agents had hit them hard. Several of his key men were in jail, and he knew that more would follow unless something was done. Marx was not a heavy drinker, so the liquor affected him more than it would another man. After mulling over the situation, he finally sent for Jake Prado.

  “Jake, it’s not Tony that’s hurtin’ us. We can take care of him. It’s that agent Lee Novak.”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s always been Novak.”

  “We’re just not safe with guys like that around. We got to set ’im back, Jake.”

  Prado was as tough as a man could be and as unfeeling. He was shrewd, however, and shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t know about that. Takin’ out anybody that even looks like a cop is dangerous. You know how it stirs ’em up.”

  “That’s right. We hit ’im, but it’s got to look like somebody else did it. As a matter of fact, it’s got to look like it’s some of Big Tony’s guys.”

  Prado stared at his boss. “How would you do that? You tell me.”

  “All right. Here’s the way it’ll play out. We can find out about the next big delivery that Morino’s going to make. As soon as we find out, we set him up with Novak.”

  “We blow the whistle on him?”