City of Iron

by Williamson, Chet

  Chapter 40

  They started by cutting off the mistakenly placed rods with hacksaws and carrying them to the correct area of the sculpture. By the time they were finished, it was nearly six o'clock, and they were all hungry. Tony called a pizza place a few blocks away where they had been regular take-out customers when Guaraldi had been reconstructing the structure, and ordered a large pepperoni for "Vinnie Antonelli," a variant on his cover name.

  "Hey, Vinnie," said the girl who manned the phone, "been a while, where you been?"

  "Hey, around, Patty. Twenty minutes?"

  When he went out the door, the cat was still there, and he rubbed its ears until it purred. Then he hopped in the car, thought for a second, and went back to the cat, picked it up, and brought it into the car with him for company. It purred nearly as loudly as the engine and curled up on his lap.

  The pizza place was hopping when Tony went in for the pie. The two waitresses were scurrying from table to table, and he had to wait a few minutes before Patty could grab the box with his order. "Looks like you scarcely got time to breathe," Tony told her, as he handed her a twenty.

  "Ah, the short order guy got sick and took off. Barely been here two weeks. He wasn't so damn good, Sal woulda kicked his ass outta here for good." She handed him the change. "Thanks, Vinnie."

  Tony said good-bye and went out the door. Vinnie. He liked the sound of that. It made him feel like he was in the old neighborhood again. He grinned and rubbed the cat's ears with his free hand. It purred, but got up and hopped in the back with the pizza. "Don't open that lid, now," he said with a chuckle, but when he heard the sound of cardboard crackling, he realized that was exactly what the cat had done.

  "Aw, shit," he muttered, then pulled the car over and looked into the backseat. The cat had somehow gotten a paw under the box lid and pulled it up enough to get his muzzle inside. Tony grabbed the cat by the scruff of its neck, pulled it away from the pizza, and lifted it into the front seat again. Then he examined the pie.

  It was okay, except for a few missing pieces of pepperoni that the cat had stolen. "Can't take you anywhere," Tony said. He put the lid down firmly and held the cat for the remainder of the trip.

  "You wanta come in, you little crook?" he asked the cat, when they pulled into the parking lot. The cat only licked its chops in reply. "Okay then, come on, you can have the rest of my pepperoni."

  The cat followed him to the warehouse and stepped inside when he held the door for it. He called out that he was back, and saw Laika and Joseph entwined in the bowels of the ironwork. From what he could see of them, Laika was holding a rod in place, while Joseph was welding it with the torch.

  "We're almost done," Joseph called back. "By the time you get the drinks from the fridge, we'll have this one on."

  Tony waved in agreement, but before he went back into the anteroom, he set his jacket over the pizza box. "Stay out of there, pal," he told the cat, who was sitting on the floor, looking up at the box on the table.

  When Tony came back less than a minute later with three cans of soda, he thought the cat was napping again. It was lying on the floor, its legs out. But then he saw its eyes were open, and there was a touch of red at its mouth and nose. Damnit, had it gotten into the pizza again? But no, his coat was still on the box.

  Then Tony noticed that the red was not tomato sauce, but froth, and as he watched, the cat's mouth slowly opened as if in a yawn. More blood trickled from between its jaws, and it spasmed once, then was perfectly still. He didn't have to touch it to know that it was dead. And he was sure he knew what had killed it.

  Laika and Joseph were walking toward him, pushing their safety glasses back up onto their foreheads. "What's that cat doing in here?" Joseph asked testily.

  "Nothing," Tony answered. "It's dead." He pointed to the box with his coat still on it. "Don't eat the pizza."

  "What?" Laika felt suddenly chilled.

  "The cat ate a couple pieces of pepperoni maybe eight, nine minutes ago. It was fine, then this happened, just in the last minute or so."

  Joseph took Tony's coat off the box and threw it to him. Then Joseph opened the lid and examined the greasy, uneven surface of the pizza. "There are very small crystals on the surface," he said. "I'm not going to taste it, but there's a chem kit at the apartment. We'll take a sample back."

  In the meantime, Laika had examined the cat. "Apparently it doesn't have any effect until it hits the central nervous system. And then it's all over." She looked up at Tony. "Where did you get this?"

  "All-Nite Diner, like always. Nobody could have gotten to it after I picked it up." His frown deepened. "So it had to be done there. Patty said they had a new short order cook who got sick and left. I thought she meant earlier, but maybe it was after he poisoned the pizza."

  "Let's go," Laika said.

  They locked up the warehouse and ran to the car. Through the dying light of day, Tony drove the few blocks to the diner quickly but not recklessly. They didn't want anyone to know they were coming.

  "You think this was a random thing?" Joseph asked. "Or were we targeted?"

  "We were targeted, all right," said Laika. "This assassin got our location somehow, learned that we got a lot of take-out from the All-Nite, and then got a job there with the express purpose of waiting until we called in an order. When we came back today, he had his chance. You gave them your cover name, didn't you, Tony?" Tony nodded. "He saw it on the order slip, and went to work, then fled. Question is, how far?"

  They pulled up in front of the All-Nite Diner, and Laika and Joseph waited while Tony went inside. He came back two minutes later, looking grim.

  "Got his address," he said, climbing back in and starting the engine.

  "What, you just asked for it?" Joseph said.

  "Yeah, after I told Patty I found a hunk of phlegm on my pizza. Told her I wanted to pound the guy who put it there. And I was right—the guy left right after he closed my pizza box and put it on the rack. Patty said Sal—he's the owner—would fire the guy's ass. She said Sal never liked him anyway, he's not Italian."

  "So what is he?" Laika asked.

  Tony smoothly guided the car around a sharp corner, and headed north. "They all called him 'Scotty.' That give you an idea?"

  Chapter 41

  They never saw his social security card, guy worked off the books," Tony went on. "Gave his name as Brian Chambers."

  "You get a description?" Joseph asked.

  "Nah, Patty just told me this while she was finding his address. He's at the Emerson Hotel, a transient place ten blocks north. Pretty rough, she said."

  The Emerson did look rough. The bricks were stained with decades of soot, and all that was left of the paint on the wood around the windows were curled chips. Joseph watched the side of the building while Laika went around the back. Tony walked inside.

  The clerk was in his early twenties, but as dissipated as a man in his forties. His long, greasy hair was tied behind his head with a thick brown rubber band, and his cheeks were cratered with acne scars. He looked at Tony but said nothing.

  "You got a tenant named Chambers?" Tony said. "Brian Chambers, maybe goes by Scotty?" The clerk didn't answer. He just kept looking at Tony in that same cold, reptilian way. "Got a Scottish accent?" There was still no response. Tony pulled out a fake NYPD ID and showed it to the man. "Let me see your register."

  "You gotta warrant?" The voice was slurred and nasty.

  "I don't need a warrant. Now you wanta do this easy, or you wanta do it rough?"

  "What you gonna do, arrest me? I know my rights."

  "No, I'm not gonna arrest you. What I'm gonna do, if I don't see that register in the next ten seconds, is call some guys I know and they'll come over and torch this shithole. With you in it."

  "You wouldn't do that, you're a cop."

  Tony couldn't decide if the guy was stubborn or just stupid, but he didn't have any more time to debate. He reached across the narrow counter and grabbed the guy by the front of his T-s
hirt. When the guy reached under the counter and brought up the .38 with the taped butt, Tony was ready for him and snatched it out of his hand before he could even stick his finger in the trigger guard. Then he whipped the man across the face with it.

  The front sight split a gutter of blood across the man's cheek, and Tony knew it would add another scar to his arsenal. Tony stuck the muzzle of the gun under the clerk's jaw. "Are you starting to see that I'm serious about this?"

  An old man who had been reading a racing form in what passed for the lobby started to get up slowly. "Sit down, pop," Tony said, and the man obliged.

  The clerk reached beneath the counter again and passed a large faux leatherbound book to Tony. Tony kept the cheap gun fixed on the clerk and opened the register. There was no listing for a Brian Chambers, nor were there any other remotely Scottish names in the book.

  "The guy's not here," said Tony, looking at the clerk with mild surprise. "Why didn't you just tell me that? Show me in the first place?"

  The man shrugged, holding the collar of his T-shirt to his bleeding face. It was true, he probably didn't know why. He'd just been trained since birth to hassle anybody in authority or, hell, anybody at all.

  Tony shook his head and walked out, the gun still in his hand. Outside, he kicked it down a storm sewer and honked twice on the horn, a signal for Laika and Joseph to rejoin him. They showed up within seconds, and Tony gave them the bad news.

  "Not going to be that easy," he said. "Apparently this guy gave Sal a phony address, which makes sense. Hell, you're gonna pop somebody, you don't want people knowing where you live."

  "Let's go back to the diner and get a description," Laika said. "Maybe we can. . . ."

  But she trailed off as the old man who had been sitting in the lobby came tottering down the cracked concrete steps of the Emerson Hotel. Tony tensed, knowing that there had been more than one case in New York of a senior citizen blowing away neighborhood bad guys.

  "Hey, son," he said, as he walked up to them, "you lookin' for the Scotchman?" The old man's cracked voice held the musical phrasing of Italy. He reminded Tony of his grandfather.

  "Guy with a Scottish accent?" Tony said. "Yeah, why?"

  The man pointed at him with a crooked finger, as if tap-ping on an invisible door, and chuckled. "You ain't no cop. I know who you are, I know the style. . . ."

  "Oh yeah? So who am I?"

  "You're a made guy, ain't ya? I know, I can tell . . . now, don't get mad, see, I been in the rackets myself."

  "You have?" Tony asked, thinking the old man was bullshitting him, but not sure.

  "Aw yeah, Gambino family. I never done nothin', you know, like killed nobody, but I knew a few that did, you know—enforcers, muscle guys. I was more an errand guy, you know—run errands and stuff, go-between kind of thing. But I seen you, I seen how you handle that punk, I say, there goes a made guy. And I say, I wanta help that guy out if I can."

  "You'd be in my debt," Tony said, more formally.

  The old man waved a hand as if to dismiss the idea. "Nah, nah, for old time's sake. I seen this Scotchman. I walk around the neighborhood a lot, you know, got nothin' much to do, the people, they leave me alone, the word's out, I don't gotta tell you that. You do good, you play right, and you get taken care of. But I know this Scotchman 'cause I seen him cookin' down at the All-Nite, you know the place?" Tony nodded. "And I hear him talkin' to Sal down there, and I'm thinkin' this guy sounds funny, you know? Because he's talkin' Scotch. And I said to Sal when the guy's not there, Sal, how come you hire this Scotchman, how come you don't hire a nice Italian guy, and Sal, he just says the guy's a great short order guy, so I don't think nothin' of it.

  "But then I see this sonofabitch about eight blocks north of here, and that's as far as I walk, 'cause the moolanyans know me around here, but up past there they don't, and who wants to get mugged, you know? Fact I know who I know don't cut nothin' with them moolanyans, no offense, lady. So's I see this Scotchman go up to the old Drummond Building, place been closed up for years, most of it boarded so the bums can't get in, and I'll be damned if this Scotch sonofabitch don't unlock the front door and go right in, closes it up behind him. He don't see me, I'm inside this coffee shop, you know.

  "So I wait, I have another cuppa coffee and a doughnut, which I can't eat many of 'cause it binds me up too bad, and I'm there an hour and this guy don't come out."

  "What's the Drummond Building?" Laika asked.

  The old man looked at Laika as though he was sore at being interrupted, but told her. "Old office building. Big one, eight stories, used to be a goddamn busy place, but hell, things changed, moolanyans took over—again, no offense—and it closed up, everybody moved away."

  "Things change," Tony said.

  "You can say that again." He looked at Laika and grinned, showing several missing teeth. "Now the families are using moolanyan dames. But lookers, yeah, some of them are lookers."

  "Thanks," said Laika, not sounding at all grateful.

  "And Jews," said the old man, examining Joseph. "You're a Jew? Hell, we had some good Jews back then, too—Meyer Lansky, he was a Jew, I never knew him, but we worked a lot with Jews."

  "I endeavor to give satisfaction," said Joseph.

  "Hah?"

  "So where's this Drummond Building?" Tony asked.

  "You go up here eight blocks, take a right, another two blocks over, it's on the corner, still got the name on it, can't miss it."

  "I deeply appreciate your help," said Tony, "Mr. . . ."

  "Cicero, Vito Cicero, like the Godfather, you know, he was Vito, too. And you're . . . ?"

  "Vincenzo."

  "Hey, that's a good name—my father, he was named 'Vincenzo.' You take care of yourself now, you hear?" He waved his hand from Laika to Joseph and back again, over and over. "Take good care of your people, too, they can't help what they are, we gotta be tolerant, times change."

  "Oh, they're not my people," said Tony, unable to resist. "She's the boss, my capo."

  Vito looked as though he didn't understand, but then his puzzlement was replaced by amazement. "She's the capo?"

  Laika finally smiled. "If ever I can do you a service, feel free to call upon me. Honeychile Brown." She put out her hand, and Vito tentatively shook it.

  "My God," he whispered, "times do change. . . ."

  Chapter 42

  "All want to know is," Laika said as they headed north, "what the hell is a moolanyan?"

  "It's a derogatory term for blacks," said Tony. "Melanzana means eggplant in Italian, and 'moolanyan' is Sicilian dialect for melanzana—just slurs the original word."

  "Eggplant?" Laika said. "Why an eggplant?"

  Tony shrugged. "They're black, I guess."

  "Great. Now we're vegetables."

  "Don't take it so hard. When I was a kid, we called ourselves dagos all the time."

  "We called ourselves Jews," Joseph said quietly.

  They parked two blocks away from the Drummond Building and walked the rest of the way. The building was, as Vito Cicero had described it, eight stories high, but the windows on the first two stories were boarded over. Laika guessed, from the decorative stonework that covered the top of the building, that it had been constructed in the early part of the century. Several of the third- and fourth-floor windows had been broken, but apparently no one had a throwing arm powerful enough for rocks or bottles to reach any higher.

  The front door was formidable and appeared to be an addition rather than part of the original building. It was steel, and strong enough to keep out any marauders or squatters who didn't pack TNT for their B&Es. Inset in the steel door was a high-security tubular lock. Tony regarded it with what Laika thought was respect. "This might take a while," he said, reaching into his jacket pocket.

  He came out with a white-handled device that looked like a power screwdriver. "Tubular lock, tubular pick," he said, inserting it into the lock and moving it delicately.

  Laika and Joseph stood in front of him to
hide him from view, but Laika wasn't too worried. Hardly anyone was around, and though they were visible from a coffee shop across the street, no one seemed to be looking out the window. Also, night wasn't as brightly lit here as it was further downtown. Most of the stores were closed by now, and many of the street lights were either burned out or broken.

  After ten minutes, they heard a pronounced click, followed by Tony's sigh. "Got it," he said as he pushed the door open.

  The Drummond Building smelled stuffy, as though no fresh air had blown through it in a long time, but it was clean enough. Their flashlights shone on a thin layer of dust that coated the floor, but Laika saw that the layer had been disturbed by the passage of feet.

  "Let's follow the footprints," she said. "Go single file." If they had noticed the footprints down the center of the hall, it followed that Brian Chambers would notice two pair of footprints on either side of the channel through the dust that he had previously made.

  The footprints led to a stairway, and they went up it quietly. They shone their lights everywhere, looking for sensors or traps, but found none. On the eighth floor, they followed the tracks in the dust down the hall to the end, where a glass-paned door was locked against them.

  Laika listened for a moment, but heard nothing inside. Tony swept the door and frame, then shook his head. It took only a few seconds for him to pick the lock, and then they went into the room.

  It had apparently once been a waiting room, but was now denuded of furniture. An inner door led to a small office. There, on the swept floor, was a clean, thin mattress without any sheets or pillow. A small Bible lay on the floor beside it. On a clothes tree in the corner hung a winter topcoat, a dark suit, two other pairs of trousers, and two clean and pressed shirts, a white one and a powder blue one. All were hung neatly on hangers. Next to the clothes tree a large, closed suitcase sat on the floor.

  "It's like a monk's cell," Laika said.

  "Does have a touch of the ascetic to it, doesn't it?" agreed Joseph, who stepped over to the suitcase and knelt down to open it.