The Case Of The Little Italy Bounce (Woody Stone, Private Investigator Book 1)

by R. D. Herring

  I liked Doc Whit. He’d helped me out on a case when we first met for no other reason than he saw it was the right thing to do. A couple of years back, a young widow hired me. She was trying to get her recently deceased husband’s insurance to pay up. Seems her husband had come home from fighting in North Africa plenty bunged up in the head. Guess facing down Panzer tanks with a long gun in 140 degree heat isn’t for the faint of heart. He came home to the Lower West Side and got a union job on the docks.

  Twelve years, a marriage and three babies later, he left his apartment alone one night and rammed the family jalopy into a bridge abutment. There were no skid marks. The flight through the windshield shredded his skin and snapped his neck. The widow came to me because the union refused to pay out insurance on an obvious suicide. They didn’t give a jot about her needs.

  Good fortune was with the widow and me when I met Doc Whit. The next day, the official autopsy report listed the cause of death as myocardial infarction; vessels in the veteran’s heart had burst. There was no doubt in my mind his heart had been broken. The thousand dollars of insurance helped the widow and her three children get back to Pennsylvania where she had kinfolk.

  I collected twenty-five dollars for my time, most of which I used to get Doc Whit and me drunk at Dempsey’s. Doc turned out to be a good drinking buddy. First, if we drank in his office, it was always sixty degrees. Secondly, drinking with Doc required absolutely no conversation, not that Doc didn’t like a good laugh.

  He told me a story about his friend, Dr. Michael Something-or-Other, that had us both rolling on the floor gripping our guts. Michael was a urethrologist, what we Marines used to call pecker-checkers. Seems, one night back when Mike was doing his residency in Chicago, a flitty young fellow showed up at the ER complaining of rectal pain.

  Mike very professionally got a proctoscope inserted in the nance’s behind. When Mike took a look, he jumped back, sent a steel rollaway cart of sterile instruments flying and landed flat on his keister. He stuttered for another doctor to t-t-take a look; t-t-tell me what you see. The other doctor peeked into the scope to find a blue eyeball staring back at him. Eventually the team fished out a shot glass with a fake eyeball made into the bottom of it.

  ***

  Doc gave me his usual greeting - a reminder that I wasn’t supposed to be on that floor.

  “There’s no rush on Mr. Fitzpatrick, Woody. It was reported a clear suicide, and he has no known relatives. He was retired NYPD, you know. Sadly, this kind of thing is pretty common.”

  “Did you find any other marks on the body, Doc? You know, like he’d been restrained, tied down?”

  “The main damage I found was along the path of the bullet from the mouth rearward resulting in an eight centimeter wide chunk of bone missing from the right posterior of the skull. Of course, there were burns and stippling in the mouth and on the lips. The scalp was ragged, and there’s evidence of a contusion adjacent to and above the right ear. I was told he fell against furniture after he shot himself.”

  “What would you say if you knew he was found sitting, peacefully slumped over his desk?”

  “Then I would say he was delivered a blow to the head severe enough to cause a concussion.”

  “Can you tell what might have been used?”

  “Don’t know, some blunt object. Take a look at my sketch on this diagram.”

  “Doc, do you think a lead-filled sap could’ve done that?”

  “That would be consistent.”

  As I drove towards Dempsey’s Broadway Restaurant, a heavy rain started to fall. I mean it was raining like a fat cow peeing on a flat rock. The sidewalks became a frantic blur with folks bolting for cover, and then it stopped just as suddenly. It made me think of the flash rains in Korea, one thing I didn’t want to think about; I was still shaking off the willies from the death factory. The smell of formaldehyde had become a taste in my mouth. The strangest thing about the morgue was that everyone working there acted like everything was just fine - a few dozen stiffs, a few hundred stiffs, not to worry.

  I didn’t discuss with Doc Whittaker the odds of a right-handed shooter sucking on his gun barrel and blowing out the right side of the back of his skull. Also, the recoil of even a .38, when fired against the weak side of the wrist, would’ve blown the gun back out of the mouth. The whole suicide claim had holes a mile wide, but overworked city employees would take the easy way every time.

  Old Fitzpatrick, with his Beef Eater schnoz and no known kinfolks had run his course. The City was done with him and, apparently, Joe Gallo had been, too. Then, Gallo had put his cross hairs on me. It was proving hard to make much headway mounting a legal case; the jamoke was so well connected on both sides of the law - ‘VWC’.

  I leaned on the familiar oval oak bar and swirled the golden liquid in my glass. I was thinking my options with Gallo were down to one. I had an idea to get my point of view across to him. I really didn’t want to do it, but I didn’t see a choice in the matter. Ray Charles’s voice was soothing the patrons with a country tune. ‘Sing it, Brother Ray’.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  (Thursday, June 23, 1960.)

  I woke up scared and shivering cold. I didn’t even want to open my eyes. If I found myself in Korea, I was going to eat my own gun. When I did open them, I was in in my bed, in my apartment. The sheets were soaked with sweat. I sat up, put my feet on the carpet and cradled my hurting head in my hands. I was thinking, the Taft surveyed sheets for residents on Monday; that day was something like Thursday.

  I took a pull on the nightstand bottle of Jack. Better - I could support the weight of my head. I lit a Lucky and made my way to the shower. I noticed it was 9:20 and hoped that was a.m. - not funny. Even with my head two sizes too big, my thoughts went to the beef I had with Joe Gallo.

  I must’ve been nuts to think I could get the bulge on the East Side Boss, but I sure as hell wasn’t taking life on his terms either. If I showed any sign of weakness, I may as well cut my own throat. Only one thing to do - spit in the cobra’s eye. If it didn’t work, it’d give ‘em something good to talk about while they planted me.

  I hit the coffee shop and pushed some fried eggs around my plate for a while. I had steeled my mind for the task that lay ahead. I had one chance. I didn’t like it, but it was my one chance. First, I had to head back into the lion’s den.

  I parked the Hawk on East 1st Street in front of Mazzella’s Restaurant. I skinned my roscoe and held it at my leg as I walked through the front door. Half dozen wops were twirling spaghetti at a table off to my right. My buddy, Rocco, was sitting alone at the bar to the left. He glanced at me as I moved down along the bar. He piped the heater. Good, I wanted him to. I stopped beyond arm’s length.

  “Hello, Rocco.” He looked my way. “Tell Joey Gallo I want to talk to him.” Rocco resumed staring at a newspaper laid flat on the bar.

  “Tell me yourself, Mr. Stone.” I glanced to the right and spotted the gold anchor around Joey’s neck. I holstered my .45 ACP.

  “I’d like to speak with you privately.”

  “Absolutely, Mr. Stone.” He stood making a grand gesture of wiping his hands with a cloth napkin before tossing it to the middle of the table. “Come on in my office.” He moved towards the kitchen doors.

  Rocco turned on his stool and gave me the universal ‘gimme’ sign. Again, I skinned my gat and laid it in his paw. He placed it on the bar and fanned me, but failed to check my ankles. I waited for Gallo to cross the room and push open the swinging doors. Keeping one eye on the other scumbags in the room, I fell in line behind him. We were briefly in the kitchen but continued into a swank leather-clad office. Tropical fish swam in a four-foot tank. Al Martino was playing softly.

  “Have a seat Mr. Stone. Name yer poison.” I sat to the side where I could watch the door.

  “Jack Daniel’s. Neat’s fine.” He handed me half a glassful and sat down behind a glass-topped desk.

  “Woody - you don’t mind if I call you Woody - Woody, I of
fered you a gift and you refused to accept it. $5,000 seems like a lot of money to me. Doesn’t it seem like a lot of money to you, Woody?”

  “It is a lot of money, Joey, but I make it a practice to meet the man I’m working with. Then, there was this stuck in my door.” I unfolded the ultimatum note, stood and slid it across his desk. He craned his neck to look down at it.

  “Woody, I like you. You’ve got balls and you’ve got talent. I could use the services of a man like you. That note, that threat - well, that’s unfortunate. I asked a man, I think you know him as Big Nig, I asked an associate to persuade you on my behalf. That note’s unfortunate - you see he’s only been with my organization a short while. Zips tend to think and operate like it’s still the last century.” I knew that ‘Zip’ was what the wiseguys call their brethren fresh off the boat from Sicily. “Take Vittorio Rossi, for instance. That will prove to be the case with him if he’s ever located.”

  Gallo was demonstrating the new pecking order, but good. He lit a Viceroy and continued. “Woody, you heard of Don Quixote?” He didn’t wait for my answer. “The book was written by Cervantes 300 years ago, but here you are - what they call, ‘tilting at windmills’ in nineteen hundred and sixty. You’re spinnin your wheels. Ya can’t stop progress.” He picked up the death threat note and crumpled it in his hand.

  “I guess, and I hope, you’re not too offended by the Zip’s fuck-up... because here you are talking to me.” He smiled and I caught a thick whiff of his sweet pungent cologne. I thought about this murderous slick pretending to be the poor, helpless guinea at the George Washington the week before. I’d have cut out his gizzard for the price of a Co-Cola.

  I lit a Lucky. What I said was, “Joey, I do admire some of the arrangements you’ve made.” The scumbag was actually smiling and nodding. “But I’m not one to take the bum’s rush.”

  “No. No, you’d be no use to me if you was. Come with me... It’ll be mutually beneficial.” He was rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. I stood up.

  “What I will do, after our talk here, is I’ll consider the offer.” A big smile came over his face. “I’ll consider the offer... if you double the cash up front.” His smile gave way to a question mark and a split second of menacing hatred. He recovered quickly.

  “Woody, if I wanted to, you think I got that kind a’ geetus in my desk drawer?” He shrugged and showed me his palms - the poor guinea act again.

  “No, Joey, but that’s fine. If you’re serious, deliver the money to my office, say, nine o’clock tonight.” I stood again and laid my business card on his desk. “I’ll give you my answer tomorrow.”

  “If I have that money delivered, I better have your answer right now.” There was no smile on his face.

  I stuck my hat on my head, tossed him the empty glass across his desk and gave him a cupped fingered salute. I may as well have been invisible when I walked out through the restaurant. I scooped my .45 auto from the bar, checked the magazine and slipped it under my arm.

  That pompous prick was so used to getting his own way that a little opposition rattled him. I’d pushed the cutthroat to the limit, but that was good - that meant he would act. When I slid into the Hawk, I took out my handkerchief and wiped the sweat from my hatband.

  I pointed the Studebaker at the Williamsburg Bridge. Glancing at my watch, I saw it was only 1:30. I had some time to kill, and I didn’t handle downtime so well. I hit Division Avenue and wheeled into Mel’s Texaco. I briefed Dupree on as much of the plan as he needed to know and laid two tens on him.

  At the office, I told Gina that it was a beautiful day and that she should go ahead and leave early. She gave me a hug and was gone before I could retract the offer. I poured myself two fingers and sat down to make a phone call, having no idea where my man was. I left half a dozen messages. Eventually, he returned my call.

  “Hello, Weegee...”

  I wrapped up that business, checked my watch again and lay down on the cracked leather couch. Big mistake... It was after seven when I woke up. I splashed water on my face and poured myself a drink while I double-checked the magazines in my .45 ACP and .32 auto. I wiped the prints off Joe Gallo’s .38 Police Chief Special and dropped the corn-popper into my hip pocket. I didn’t like what I had to do, but focused on it anyway. I slid my shiv into my pants pocket and put on a black sweater and a dark work jacket to hide my shoulder rig. I turned off all but the front office lights. I realized I had been humming along with Lloyd Price on the Motorola and snapped it off.

  Dusk had passed when I slipped into the alley and into the darkness of the old Liberty Printing side entryway. I had parked the Hawk in the usual spot, which, more or less, dictated where another vehicle would have to park. I knew I’d be getting a visit from one of Gallo’s henchmen, one way or the other - either bearing gifts or bad intentions. Didn’t matter to me, as long as some asshole showed up, preferably alone.

  Time dragged but adrenaline kept me alert. When headlights swept the far end of the alley, I slipped on my brown leather driving gloves. I could have acted on reflex; I’d gone over it in my mind so many times. However, in every mental rehearsal, I stopped short of the plan. I knew I’d just have to wait and see...

  A black ’57 Sedan de Ville doused its headlights and crept down the alley. The brake lights flared just as it passed my position. Five seconds later, a big dark figure moved between the Caddy and the rear of the Studebaker. Six seconds later, I brought my .45 auto down like a sledgehammer on his temple. He dropped in a sack-like sag still hanging onto a briefcase.

  I holstered my rod and jimmied the case from his grip. I eyeballed the contents and tossed it through the de Ville’s open window. I grabbed the goon’s shoulders and pulled him back against the building as my night vision returned. ‘Hello, Rocco’ - a surprise but a bonus, really. I skinned off his suit coat, balled it up and jammed it over the .38 Chief in my right hand. I put two rounds behind his ear.

  “That’s for Sean Fitzpatrick, 27 years on the job with New York’s Finest. You piece a’ shit!”

  My ‘plan’ was to cut out his tongue, but I knew I wasn’t going to because I hadn’t been able to visualize doing it in the planning process. That pissed me off on some level. I opened both rear doors on the Caddy and backed through dragging the lummox in and onto the floorboard. I threw his coat over him.

  Dupree answered almost immediately when I knocked on his door.

  “You good to roll, bo?” He nodded and stepped outside.

  “The keys are in the Hawk. You follow that Caddy to 54 Hampton, Woodside, Queens. You park on the curb couple a’ doors down. Mostly single houses there. You know that area?”

  “Yeah, I do, Woody.”

  “Stick with me, but look for me there if we get separated.”

  “Gotcha. 54 Hampton.”

  In my adrenaline-sotted brain, it seemed like five minutes before I was driving down Hampton Street with the Caddy’s lights off. Nobody was stirring when I drove two wheels up on the front lawn of the East Side Mob Boss.

  I jerked the coat off the stiff, opened the briefcase and broke the paper bank wraps on the stacks of 50’s. I dumped the contents on the body and threw the .38 on the backseat. Rocco’s eyes were glassed and staring at me upside down. I started up the street, then turned back to finish it. It had to be a big message; my life was in the balance.

  I slid behind the wheel of the Hawk and saw that Dupree had parked down from a Ford Business Coupe. As I drove away, I saw the explosion of flash bulbs in my rearview mirror.

  “Woody, was that backfirin I heard just before you came to get me?”

  “Exactly, Dupree. I heard it myself.”

  I slept at the office that night, where my shotgun and extra ammo was stored.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  (Friday, June 24, 1960.)

  I was awake and up early, like my life depended on it. I got cleaned up, changed my clothes and walked up to the deli for a newspaper. BINGO! Front page below the fold: ‘Restaurant Mana
ger Found Dead Execution Style. Body found in grisly scene at home of local union official in Queens’. The story was accompanied by an equally grisly tight photo of a stiff, covered in fifty-dollar bills, laying on the floorboard of a car. Especially gruesome was the switchblade knife sticking out of the corpse’s eye socket.

  Another bigger frame photo showed a handsome black de Ville sitting on the sidewalk and lawn of a large, pleasant brick home with the number ‘54’ beside the door.

  I got a cup of java and a cannole and sat down to read the details. A dim understanding of politics was coming over me. We’d see if the Five Families Commission and City Hall still think Crazy Joe’s star is on the rise!

  Back at the office, I put the bag of cannolis I bought for Gina on her desk. I got the Percolator perking, and went in my office to test my theory. Had I rolled a seven or snake eyes - about to find out. I dialed the Mazzella's Restaurant number I got from Directory Assistance and a man who sounded like he was afflicted with a broken nose answered on the second ring.

  “This is Woody Stone for Joe Gallo.”

  “Yeah, wait a minute.”

  “Yeah, Joe Gallo.”

  “Good morning, Joey. Did you get my answer?”

  “That I did, Mr. Stone.”

  “But, do you understand?”

  “I’m pretty sure I do... Let me tell ya, if the press hadn’t got hold of that stunt, things would be different. After you resolved the Jack McCoy issue, I thought I saw an advantage in having you in my employ.”

  “What makes you think I resolved anything concerning McCoy?”

  “Don’t be modest, Mr. Stone; I have ways. Now, it seems you have habits that might make you a liability, but it’s a big city. You stay out a’ my yard and I’ll stay out a’ yours. It would be too bad if we were a problem for one another. Do you understand?”