But just a little way into the story, Sofia realized that Tina was really trying to drag information out of her about Charlie. When was the last time you saw him? Did you have a chance to talk to him? I wonder if he would remember us. I wonder if he would remember me.
Sofia thought, She has something going on in her head with Charlie, and I don’t know what it is.
Bluntly, she asked, “Has Charlie been your lover?”
Tina laughed merrily. “Oh, no. I bumped into him once and we chatted, but he never even called me. From what I understand, he has lots of women.”
“He has a Russian woman,” Sofia said.
“Oh?”
“Yes, a showgirl of some kind. She would come into the restaurant with him once in a while, and people would always treat her with respect, even though she wore as much makeup as a circus clown. It was clear she was Charlie’s girlfriend.” She could not resist adding: “She probably still is. He seemed very much taken with her.”
“Is she very beautiful?” Tina asked.
“Barely as beautiful as you,” Sofia said with a smile, “and not nearly so lovely as I am.” She stood up and held out her belly with both hands, and both girls laughed.
Sofia collapsed back onto her chair, looked at Tina, and said, “Do you remember that once you promised me our lives would never be dull?”
“Yes,” Tina said. “But I made no promises about their not being dirty.”
The two young women sat quietly for a long time, and the evening grew long and tedious. Sofia tired early and wanted to go to sleep. Finally, she was forced to yawn and Tina said, “I can take a hint. I’ll let you get some rest.”
When she was gone, the church bells rang again. It was almost midnight.
She sat in the chair near the window. A light snow was falling and it seemed brighter on the streets outside than it did here inside her apartment. She looked at her new clock. It was already Christmas morning, way past time to go to bed. When she got up to turn off the lights, there was a light knock at the door.
She walked to the door and talked softly through the wood.
“Who’s there?”
“Tommy.”
Sofia stood very still. She could feel her heart pounding inside her chest.
“What do you want, Tommy? It’s very late.”
“I saw the light in your window. I want to talk to you. Please open the door.”
“Go away, Tommy.”
“Please.”
She wondered if he was drunk. He did not sound it. She opened the lock on the door but kept the security chain closed, then peeked her head around to talk to Tommy through the opening. Her body was hidden by the rest of the door. He was wearing his police uniform and a heavy overcoat.
“What do you want, Tommy?”
“I’m going to try to free Nilo,” he said, and then seemed at a loss for words.
“You arrested him. How are you going to free him?”
“I’m going to try,” Tommy said. “Can I come in? I walked up here, off my post.”
“No. It’s too late.”
Tommy leaned closer to the door.
“Sofia, I…” His words seemed to stick in his throat.
Sofia caught her breath and felt faint. But some things were best left in the past.
“Please, Sofia,” Tommy said.
“Why? You got hot pants since your waitress left town?”
“Please.”
“Go away; I’m married.”
“I want to help you, Sofia.”
Suddenly the macabre reason for Tommy’s visit became clear. He wanted to free Nilo so that she and Nilo could live happily ever after.
Poor dumb Tommy. I don’t care if Nilo lives or dies. I hate him, just as I hate you, Tommy. I hate everyone. Especially myself.
“Do what you want. I’m going to bed. Merry Christmas.”
She closed the door and locked it again. Still standing there, she began crying.
This world is just a practical joke, and God, if there is a God, plays with our lives.
She turned out the lights and stood there for a long time waiting for Tommy to leave. Finally, she heard his footsteps going down the hall.
* * *
THE DINER WAS ONE OF A STRING of anonymous all-night places, set down in the shadows of the big ocean liners that used the Hudson River docks. It had been constructed from an old railroad car, and in a doomed, desperate attempt to give it a holiday atmosphere, someone had hung a small green wreath on the front sliding door. But now with Christmas gone, and the new year of 1925 already a week old, the needles had fallen off the wreath and it was just a mass of twigs that looked like a bird’s nest in training.
The diner was on the fringe of Tommy’s beat, and he had stopped in occasionally for a meal. As far as he knew, he was the only cop to set foot in the place, whose usual clientele consisted of tough-talking dockworkers and an occasional sailor.
As he came inside out of the sleet and snow that was blowing across the Hudson, Tommy saw the man he was looking for and went up to his booth and stood beside it. He waited for what seemed like a long time before clearing his throat to draw the other’s attention.
When the other man did not respond, Tommy said, “Mr. Kinnair?”
The other man turned to look at him. John F. X. Kinnair was younger than Tommy had imagined—youthful, almost baby-faced. He had light sand-colored hair, pale blue eyes, and a face filled with freckles. He held out his hand.
“Tommy Falcone, I presume.” They shook hands and Kinnair nodded to the bench across the table. “Sit down. Have some coffee. You can call me Zave. That’s short for Xavier. Most people do.” He spoke in a rapid series of short bursts of words. “I’m glad you came. These people are giving me the evil eye and I started to worry about getting out alive.”
“You’re safe now,” Tommy said with a grin.
“I thought me dear old uncle Timothy would be with you,” Kinnair said in a thick, fake Irish brogue.
Tommy shook his head. This was a job where he needed another policeman he could trust. His father would have wanted no part of it, so he had called on Tony’s old precinct partner, Detective Tim O’Shaughnessy.
“He’s at the place already,” Tommy said. “Just in case.”
The waitress brought over a fresh cup and a pot of coffee and poured. The two men cradled their cups in their hands, as if to protect themselves from the cold outside. Tommy was surprised to realize he was a little nervous. He had never really talked to a newspaperman before and he did not trust them much.
Apparently, Kinnair could see that. “Okay,” he said. “Tim has told me what you’re up to and that you wanted to meet with me, but why don’t you just go through it in your own words.”
“Why?”
“Because I want you to,” Kinnair said. He smiled like a kid playing poker and holding aces in the hole. But when Tommy looked at the wall clock over the diner counter, Kinnair softened. “I want to hear it from you so that I know it’s all for real,” he said. “And so I can find out if I should trust you.”
I’ve been a damned fool to come here, Tommy thought. Papa was right. You can’t trust a reporter.
He stood up abruptly. “Maybe this is all a mistake,” he said.
“Will you sit down and calm down?” Kinnair said. “Look, you came to see me because you didn’t know of a lot of cops you could trust. At least, that’s what me sainted uncle Timothy said. Is that true, or is it that you just don’t trust anybody at all, including me? If that’s so, you’re going to lead a lonely life. But you might ask around. You won’t find a cop who’ll tell you I ever lied to him or tried to harm him. Who have you got but me?”
Tommy sat down, and the counterman, who had been watching them, seemed to relax and lean back against the wall near the big coffee urn.
“What do you want to know?” Tommy said.
“From the beginning. And I’ll take notes.”
Tommy moistened his lips. “Okay. You kno
w I’m the one who brought in Nilo Sesta, the Dago of Death, the papers called him.”
“Not my paper and I don’t take to that,” Kinnair said. “We called him Kid Trouble.”
“That was his gang name.”
“I know. I took the trouble to find out,” Kinnair said.
“Nilo’s a cousin of mine from the old country,” Tommy went on. “I think I know him pretty well and I don’t like him all that much, but he’s family. You know what family is to us Italians. Okay, now I can believe that Nilo would have killed that guy in the theater, maybe did that ax job. But I don’t think he did that kid. He’s too smart and too careful for that.”
He stopped to sip some coffee.
“So I was surprised when they came up with these two guys to testify so definitely that they saw him shoot the kid. And I keep hearing this story around that these witnesses that put him at the scene of the kid’s killing were a put-up job. They were paid by Masseria because Nilo worked for Maranzano. You know all about that stuff, right?”
Kinnair nodded his head.
“So I started checking around, and I find out that these two witnesses, Pasquale Cierli and Alberto Numia, help run one of Masseria’s stills. And they were working at the still at the same time they were supposed to be uptown seeing Nilo kill this kid.”
“How did you find out? You Italians aren’t supposed to talk.”
Tommy held out his hands. “Among ourselves we do. We just aren’t big on talking to the law. Or to the press.”
Kinnair grinned.
“Anyway, I tracked down the still. It’s in an old building on the waterfront. The two so-called witnesses were there that day and evening. And there were two other people working with them.”
“Who are they?”
“Their name’s Randisi. Two brothers.”
“But they won’t say anything, right?”
“They might. They used to work for Joe the Boss. These days, they have a different employer.”
“Maranzano?”
“You said it, not me,” Tommy replied.
“I don’t know,” Kinnair said. “You’ve got two Italians who maybe lied, and now you got two other Italians who are going to say that, and I don’t know if anybody’s really going to believe either of them. It’s not much.”
“There’s more,” Tommy said. “Whoever it was who called and told me where Nilo was didn’t want him arrested. He wanted him killed. That’s why those gunmen were waiting outside for us.”
“Maybe they just wanted to kill you,” Kinnair said.
Tommy shrugged and grinned. “I don’t know. You’re talking to a man without an enemy in the world. Anyway, I think after trying to have Nilo killed didn’t work, then whoever’s behind this bribed the witnesses to get him convicted and executed.”
“I got to admit. You sound like you might be on to something. So what do you want me to do?”
“Nilo’s scheduled to die in another ten days.” Tommy searched Kinnair’s face. It had seemed expressionless, but he noticed deep back inside the man’s eyes something that looked like a gleam, a predatory gleam.
“So, you want me to do a story and get done through publicity what maybe you can’t get done through the law. Is that it?”
Tommy nodded and Kinnair laughed aloud. “I love it,” he said. “I love all this corruption shit. It’s great ink. Just one question.”
“Yeah?”
“What’s in it for you?” Kinnair asked. “First you locked this Sesta up and now you’re trying to free him. Why?”
“Do I sound like a jerk if I say I think he deserved a fair trial?”
“Not a jerk,” Kinnair said. “But definitely odd.”
Tommy shrugged. “Then I’m odd.” He looked at the wall clock again. “I’ve kind of set up these two phony witnesses, this Cierli and Numia. I had one of the Randisis call them and say that they have to meet tonight to talk about something. Randisi is going to demand money to keep his mouth shut. When he does, you can be there taking it all down. You were supposed to have a photographer with you. Where is he?”
Kinnair motioned with his head. “In the car. He had a rough night and he’s trying to sleep some of it off.”
“Drunk? How the hell will he be able to work?”
“I’ve never known him to work sober,” Kinnair said. “He’ll do just fine. What do you want us to do? Get some pictures of these two guys coming out of the Randisis’ place? Is that it?”
“You’re the newsman, but I would think so,” Tommy answered.
“And where will you be?” Kinnair asked.
“Your uncle and I will be outside,” Tommy said. “We’ll be ready to come in and arrest them if they try any rough stuff. If not, we get them outside when they leave the building.”
* * *
THE RANDISIS LIVED in a semiabandoned building not far from the docks, a couple of blocks away from the usual accepted boundary of Little Italy. Their private still was in the basement, Tommy had explained, but its yeasty fumes hung out over the street, even on a night as cold as this one.
Tommy could smell it through the open car window as Kinnair parked his sedan across the street. The photographer was slouched in the backseat, snoring occasionally. “I thought you said that my uncle Tim was out here keeping watch,” Kinnair said.
“He’s supposed to be. Maybe he ducked around the corner to take a leak. Let’s wait a couple of minutes.”
They waited awhile and Tommy took out his pocket watch and studied it. “We’ve still got fifteen minutes before Cierli and Numia are due.”
“What if they came early?” Kinnair asked.
The same thought had just occurred to Tommy and he was already opening the car door. “Then we’ve got trouble,” he said. “I’m going upstairs to check. You two better wait here.”
Tommy slammed the car door shut against the wind. It seemed to have gotten colder and stronger. There was no sleet now; it was all snow and it was coming down in blinding quantities. Crossing the ice-slicked street was perilous by itself. He got to the entry to the Randisis’ building, unholstered his pistol, and looked back. Behind him he could see the bigger shape of the photographer skidding along in his tracks. Kinnair had decided not to wait.
The stairway was lit by three bright bulbs suspended on cords with reflecting metal shields around them. Part of the moonshiners’ early warning system, Tommy supposed. He felt totally naked as he walked upstairs. Each step creaked as he put his foot down. That too was part of the warning system. He remembered something his father had said to him years before, when he was just a child: If you walk on the edges, the stairs don’t squeak. They squeak most in the middle.
Tommy moved his body to the side near the banister and went up foot over foot, almost crablike. The steps stopped their groaning under his weight. From the top of the stairs came the sound of a phonograph turned up to full volume. It was playing some tinny-sounding popular dance tune.
That did not seem right somehow. Tommy went upstairs faster. When he got to the top, he inched toward the door of the sole apartment on the floor and put his ear up against it. Except for the music, he could hear no other sound. That too did not seem right. He tried the doorknob gently. It was locked.
He was about to knock when he heard a strangled sound from inside the apartment, followed by a shout and the sound of dull heavy blows.
Tommy positioned himself in front of the door, brought his gun up into firing position, raised his foot, and slammed his heel into the door. The frame gave way and the door pivoted into the room.
Tommy lunged forward two steps into the apartment before he could stop. He dropped to one knee. Off to his side, he saw some people and glanced there to see a fat Italian woman sheltering two young children with her own body. He swung his head around in the other direction, and as he did he heard a buzzing zip past his ear. It stopped with a squishy plop somewhere behind him in the hallway. It was followed by a howl of pain and a curse. He raised his gun to fire, then stop
ped.
Two men were facing in his direction. He recognized them as Cierli and Numia. Cierli was standing at the open living room window, a window facing out on a brick wall and an air shaft. He had his knee on the middle of something that was sprawled across the windowsill and was leaning down on it with his left hand and arm while holding a gun in Tommy’s direction with his right. It took Tommy a split second to make out that the something in the windowsill was a man—Randisi—bent over double backward, his head and shoulders hanging in space, his feet desperately scrabbling for a hold on the floor. Cierli was smiling. In the corner, bent up on the floor was Tim O’Shaughnessy, and Numia was squatted over him, his gun aimed at the cop’s left ear.
“Stop, copper,” Cierli said.
Tommy froze.
“Drop your gun.”
Tommy hesitated and Numia shouted, “Drop it or your friend here gets a bullet in the ear. Now!”
Tommy cursed himself for stupidity. He had no choice. And then the room was bathed in a blinding flash of white light. The photographer must have set off a flashbulb, and both Cierli and Numia glanced in that direction.
Tommy fired at Numia’s temple and missed, hitting him in the throat instead. For an instant, he stood stunned at the explosion of blood and gore from his own body. He turned slightly to face Tommy, staring at him with tiny hate-filled eyes. Tommy shot him again, catching him this time in the middle of the forehead.
O’Shaughnessy moved quickly, rolling under the gunman’s arm, pulling it down toward the floor. Numia went into his death spasms and his gun went off: once, twice, three times, each bullet impacting harmlessly into the bare floorboards.
Tommy turned back toward Cierli at the window. Again the room was flooded with brilliant white light, and Tommy blinked. When he opened his eyes, Randisi was gone from the window; his scream as he fell echoed through the apartment.
Cierli was turning, reaching for his own gun, a look of feral hatred on his face. Time seemed to slow down. Tommy aimed carefully at the man; he wanted to take him alive. He squeezed off a round at Cierli’s knees. It missed the man’s knees and, for an instant, Tommy thought it missed him entirely. Then Cierli stood slowly up, grabbing his belly with both hands. He looked down at it with horror and surprise. He opened his mouth as if to say something, and another flashbulb went off. Cierli staggered forward a step or two, raising his gun as he did. Tommy shot again, catching the man full in the chest this time, knocking him backward and spinning him around. When he dropped to the floor, he was clearly already dead.
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